Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/110

 "is the head quarters of a great nation, the spot in which its concentrated wisdom is collected, to devise laws for the benefit of the whole community, — the just and equal laws of a free people and a great democracy!" — I was going on with this mental soliloquy, when the iron collar about my neck touched a place from which it had rubbed the skin; and as I started with the pain, the rattling of chains reminded me, that these just and equal laws of a free people and a great democracy' did not avail to rescue a million of bondmen from hopeless servitude; and the cracking of our drivers' whips told too plainly that within a stone's throw of the Temple of Liberty — nay, under its very porticos — the most brutal, odious and detestable tyranny found none to rebuke, or to forbid it. What sort of liberty is it whose chosen city is a slave-market? — and what that freedom, which permits the bravado insolence of a slave-trading aristocracy to lord it in the very halls of her legislation?

We passed up the street which led by the Capitol, and presently arrived at the establishment of Savage, Brothers & Co, our new masters. Half an acre of ground, more or less, was enclosed with a wall some twelve feet high, well armed at the top, with iron spikes and pieces of broken bottles. In the centre of the enclosure, was a low brick building of no great size, with a few narrow, grated windows, and a stout door, well secured with bars and pad-.locks. This was the establishment used by Messrs Savage, Brothers & Co as a ware-house, in which they stowed _ away such slaves, as they purchased from time to time, in the neighboring country, to be kept till they were ready to send them off in droves, or to ship them to the South. In common with all the slave-trading gentry, Messrs Savage,