Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/117

 the courts and lawyers of the North scrupulously fulfil to the utmost letter, the constitutional obligation to restore to the Southern master, the victim who has escaped his grasp, and fled to the ‘free States,' in the vain hope of protection; whilst the whole North looks calmly on, and tamely suffers the Southern slave-holders to violate all the provisions of that same constitution, and to imprison, torture, and put to death, the citizens of the North without judge or jury, whenever they imagine that such severities can contribute, in the slightest degree, to the security of their slave-holding tyranny. Nay more; many of the Northern aristocrats, in the energy of their hatred of democratical equality, seem almost ready to envy, while they affect to deplore, the condition of their Southern brethren. And yet the northern States of the Union dare to assert that they are undefiled by the stain of slavery. It is a vain, false boast. They: are partners in the wrong. The blood of the slave is on their hands, and is dripping in red and gory drops, from the skirts of their garments.

Before leaving the prison, we were supplied with handcuffs, those usual badges and emblems of servitude, and having reached the wharf, we were crammed together, into the hold of the vessel, so close that we had hardly room to move, and not room enough either to lie or sit with comfort. The vessel got under way soon after we came on board, and proceeded down the river. Once or twice a day, we were suffered to come on deck, and to breathe the fresh air for a few minutes; but we were soon remanded to our dungeon in the hold. The mate of the vessel seemed to be a good natured young man, and disposed to render our condition as comfortable as possible; but the captain was a savage tyrant, worthy of the business in which he was engaged.

We had been on our voyage a day or two, and had already cleared the river, and were standing down the bay, when-I became excessively sick. A burning fever seemed raging in my veins. It was after sunset; the hatches were closed down; and the heat of the narrow hold in which we were confined, and which was more than half filled up with boxes and barrels, became intolerable. I knocked