Page:The Negro a menace to American civilization.djvu/57

Rh copper kettles designed for slaver's use. The newspapers were full of advertisements of slaves and slaver goods. The young bloods of the town deemed it fine amusement to circulate hand-bills in which negro girls were offered for sale. An artist of wide repute—Stothard—painted "The voyage of the Sable Venus from Angola to the West Indies." No doubt much of the same sort went on in the colonies, for New England soon took the lead in the slave-trade, and as it was a field full of adventure, cruelty, independence, chance for wealth, unlimited opportunity to gratify the sexual passions with a new and an enslaved race. To drink rum to one's fill, no end of the colonial Yankee boys of all ages plunged into it with avidity. Moore in his History of Slavery in Massachusetts, says: "At the very birth of foreign commerce from New England the African slave-trade became a regular business," and Hopkins in his Reminiscences stated that in 1770 there were no less than 150 vessels belonging to Rhode Island alone in the African slave-trade, and that State was responsible for enslaving more of them than any other one in all New England. Newport, in fact, was started and built up on the African slave-trade almost entirely. England's wealth was largely involved in it, and beyond all peradventure, the slave-ship service brought to that country her renowned and hardy seamen

The famous Captain John Paul Jones, of the American Colonial navy gained his experience and his reputation along the same lines. He served in the forecastle of the slaver King George. It was thus that this vile traffic,—fatal, murderous, and beastly trade, bred