Page:The Negro a menace to American civilization.djvu/65

Rh tain; the demand in the colonies for them was great and ever-growing; latent fortunes lay in the trade. Something must be done. So in that year when the Boston ship Rainbowe was on the Coast, she fell in with some London slavers that were there, and withal tired of waiting for a cargo. To enliven things the Londoners and the Yankees combined and on some pretence of a row with the blacks on shore, landed a howitzer called in those days "a murderer," and one Sunday morning raided a village, killing scores of the inhabitants and capturing some of them alive. Captain Smith of the Boston boat got two of these. He was an American,— proud of the feat, and his brilliant slaughter of innocent men, women and children ; and further that he had been the first to teach the world how to obtain slaves in Africa without waiting so long on the Coast for them. In Boston this captain was tried on his return home, but of course the courts had no jurisdiction over any acts he may have committed on the coast of Africa, and so the charges against him of Sabbath-breaking, kidnapping and murder were dismissed. Both the slaves were sent back to Africa.

This case cleared the coast for all Americans who cared to go and do likewise. From a peaceful and orderly traffic,— as disgusting and as cruel as it was,— the slave-trade was soon enlarged by this added feature of open invasion of the negro territory with the view of slave capture. Shore stations were established soon thereafter, veritable hells of iniquity, so these shore attacks began to be far more frequent, and on an ever-increasing scale. Not only this, but the slavers instigated the coast tribes to make attacks themselves for the profit there was in it. Thus wars