Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/340

 consistent with the condition of servitude. What do you think is likely to be the consequence of having among our slaves the descendants of such men, for instance, as Thomas Jefferson?"

"Thomas Jefferson! nonsense!" exclaimed the New Yorker.

"Nonsense or not, I can only say, that I once saw a very decent, bright mulatto woman, at least three quarters white, sold at auction, who claimed to be a granddaughter of that famous ex-president; and, as far as resemblance goes, her face and figure sustained her pretensions. At any rate, the woman brought an extra hundred dollars or so beyond her otherwise market value, as the purchaser facetiously observed, on account of the goodness of the breed."

The two northern passengers seemed a little shocked at this story, the force of which they attempted to evade by insisting that the woman must have been an impostor, and that perhaps this idea was got up for the very purpose of enlivening the sale.

"Well," said the other with a laugh, "that certainly is very possible. Gouge and McGrab were unquestionably shrewd fellows, and in the way of trade up to almost any thing."

My interest in the conversation was here redoubled. Gouge and McGrab! McGrab was the name of the very slave trader by whom my wife and child had been purchased and transported to Augusta, and it was as his property that my agent formerly employed in that business had obtained the last trace of them.

I hastened to inquire when and where it was that my fellow-passenger had witnessed this sale of Jefferson's alleged granddaughter.

"O, at Augusta, in Georgia, some twenty years since," was the answer. ab:

"And pray," I asked, "who is this McGrab that you speak of? I have an interest in getting some trace of a slave dealer of that name."

He readily replied that McGrab was a Scotchman by birth, but a South Carolinian by education, engaged