Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/184

Rh New Orleans, and each time it carried slaves, once twenty, once twelve.

A sea captain in Massachusetts told a story to a commissioner sent to look after the Indians, which I will tell you. He commanded a small brig, which plied between Carolina and the Gulf States. "One day, at Charleston," said he, "a man came and brought to me an old negro slave. He was very old, and had fought in the Revolution, and been very distinguished for bravery and other soldierly qualities. If he had not been a negro, he would have become a captain at least, perhaps a colonel. But, in his old age, his master found no use for him, and said he could not afford to keep him. He asked me to take the revolutionary soldier and carry him South and sell him. I carried him, said the man, "to Mobile, and I tried to get as good and kind a master for him as I could, for I didn't like to sell a man that had fought for his country. I sold the old revolutionary soldier for a hundred dollars to a citizen of Mobile, who raised poultry, and he set him to attend a hen-coop." I suppose the South Carolina master drew the pension till the soldier died. "Why did you do such a thing?" said my friend, who was an anti-Slavery man. "If I didn't do it," he replied, "I never could get a bale of cotton, nor a box of sugar, nor anything to carry from or to any Southern port."

In politics, almost all leading men have been servants of Slavery. Three "major prophets" of the American Republic have gone home to render their account, where the servant is free from his master and "the wicked cease from troubling," and the " weary are at rest." Clay, Calhoun, Webster; they were all prophets of Slavery against Freedom. No men of high political standing and influence have ever lived in this century who were sunk so deep in the mire of Slavery as they during the last twenty years. No political footprints have sunk so deep into the soil—their tracks run towards bondage. Where they marched Slavery followed. Our Presidents must all be pro-Slavery men. John Quincy Adams even, the only American thus far who inherited a great name and left it greater, as President, did nothing against Slavery that has yet come to light; said nothing against it that has yet come to light, The brave