Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/349

 thus in the abstract, the whole system, I must Say, seems to me a very pitiful affair. But in what respect the slave traders are less respectable than the slave raisers, or the slave buyers, I am unable to see; and yet it is a fact that Mr A B, of Virginia, who only saves himself from emigration and a sheriff's sale by selling every year a half a dozen or so of prime young hands, male and female, for the southern market, pretends to look with a certain contempt on the trader to whom he sells them, while Mr C D, of Georgia, who invests all his surplus cash, and all that he can borrow besides, in the purchase of fresh slaves, pretends to look with a similar contempt on the trader of whom he buys them." For some reason-or other, — so Mr Colter humorously remarked, — the old maxim, that the receiver is as bad as the thief, did not seem to hold good of the slave trading business; for what reason, except that it is so much easier to see the mote in a neighbor's eye, than the beam in one's own, he was. quite unable to tell.

Then, again, there were things about the trade very unpleasant. To be sure, with the worst part of it, he had little to do. The buying up the slaves in the more northern states was principally managed by McGrab. The getting them away from their homes, and the separation of families, was often a troublesome and disagreeable business; at least, it would have been to him, though McGrab never complained of it. The principal management of the sales at Augusta had been in the hands of Gouge, who understood, as well as any body, showing off the stock to the best advantage. Very few persons could outdo him in passing off a consumptive or scrofulous hand as every way sound, or a woman of forty-five for a woman of thirty. His (Colter's) share of the business had chiefly consisted in having charge of the slave pen at Augusta, where the stock was kept to be fatted and put in order for market. Indulgence and plenty were the order of