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VOICES OF THE TRUE HEARTED.

No. 5.

THE SLAVE MARKET AT WASHINGTON.

BY JOHN G. WHITTIER.

I find, in a late number of the Albany Patriot, a letter from a gentleman in the city of Washington, addressed to the editor, from which I take the following paragraphs:

had come to the city in a vessel, and had been seized and imprisoned on suspicion of being a slave. As he happened to have no document to prove his freedom, after having been kept in close confinement in a prison cell for six months, he was in a few days to be sold as a slave, to pay the fees of the jailor!

We visited, the next day, a slave holder's estab"This year, over five thousand slaves have already lishment in the city of Washington. It stood somebeen sold in our dens of diabolism, and many more what apart from the dense part of the city, yet in heart strings will be broken before the winter sets in, by full view of the capitol. Its dark, strong walls rose sundering all the ties of life, to meet the demand of human victims in the Louisiana market. In Florida, also, in dim contrast with the green beauty of early sumthe demand has been increased, by the diabolical law mer-a horror and an abomination-a blot upon the to encourage the armed settlement' of that slavery- fair and pleasant landscape. We looked in upon a cursed territory, and thus increase the political weight group of human beings herded together like cattle of the slave system in the councils of the country. for the market. The young man in attendance in"Scenes have taken place in Washington, this sum-formed us that there were five or six other regular mer, that would make the devil blush through the darkness of the pit, if he had been caught in them. A fortnight ago last Tuesday, no less than SIXTY HUMAN BEINGS were carried right by the capitol yard to a slave ship! The men were chained in couples, and fastened to a log chain, as it is common in this region. The women walked by their side. The little children were carried along in wagons."

In the summer of 1840, when in Washington, I took occasion, in company with two friends, to visit the principal slave-trading establishments of the district. In Alexandria, at a great slave prison formerly known as Franklin & Armfield's, there were about fifty slaves. They were enclosed by high, strong walls, with grated iron doors. Among them was a poor woman who had escaped, twelve years before, from slavery, and who had married a free man. She had been hunted out by some of those human blood-hounds, who are in the detestable occupation of slave-catchers, separated from her husband, and, with her child, had been sold to the spec

slave dealers in the city, who, having no prisons of their own, kept their slaves in this establishment, or in the CITY PRISON. The following advertisement of this infernal market house, I have copied from the Washington Globe and the Intelligencer :

CASH PAID FOR NEGROES.'

"The subscriber wishes to purchase a number of negroes for the Louisiana and Mississippi markets. He Himself or agent, at all times, can be found at his will pay the highest price which the market will justify. JAIL, on Seventh street, the first house south of the market bridge, on the west side. Letters addressed to him will receive the earliest attention.

WILLIAM H. WILLIAMS."

In the same papers, four other regular dealers in human beings advertised themselves. In addition, George Kephart, of Alexandria, advertised the "copper fastened brig, Isaac Franklin." It was nearly

ready to sail with slaves for New Orleans. So much for the national newspaper organs of the whig and democratic parties! What must be the state of parties which can acknowledge such papers as their mouth pieces.

ulators for the New Orleans market. Another woman, whose looks and manner were expressive of deep anguish, had, with her nine children, been sold away from her husband-an everlasting separation! But her sorrows had but just begun. Long ere this, she and her children have probably been re-sold, On the wall of the slave dealer's office were susscattered and divided, and are now toiling in hope-pended some low and disgraceful pictures and caricaless bereavement, or buried like brutes, without a tures, in which the abolitionists and blacks were tear or Christian rite, on the banks of the Missis- represented, and in which Daniel O'Connell and John sippi. Q. Adams held a prominent position, as objects for From this horrible MARKET HOUSE of HU-the obscene jokes and witticism of the scoundrel MAN FLESH, we were informed that from fifteen traffickers, For one, I regard it as an honorable teshundred to two thousand slaves are sometimes sent timony to the faithfulness and heroism of these great to the South in a single year. and good men, in their advocacy of human freedom. The time is, I trust, not far distant, when those very

At the Alexandria public jail was a poor lad who

pictures shall cause the knees of the base pirates | wonderfully endowed, the fact that they have emwho congregate in the den of iniquity, to smite together.

ployed their talents in upholding a system which crushes and kills the minds of millions. But here in the slave prison, I saw them in another light.— The fascinations of genius, which, like the silver veil of the Eastern Prophet, had covered them, fell off, and left only the deformity of tyranny. I looked upon the one as the high priest of slavery, ministering at its altar, and scowling defiance to the religion and philanthropy of christendom-the fitting

priate emblem is the SLAVE-WHIP, with the negro at one end, and an overseer at the other. And Iwith God's immortal children, converted into mer

Known to God only, is the dreadful amount of human agony and suffering, which, from this slave-jail, has sent its cry, unheard or unheeded of man, up to His ear. The mother weeping for her child-the wife separated from her husband, breaking the night silence with the shriek of breaking hearts! Now and then an appalling fact shed light upon the secret horrors of the prison house. In the winter | champion of that southern democracy, whose approof 1838, a poor colored man, overcome with horror at being sold to the South, put an end to his life by cutting his throat. From the private establishment we next proceed-chandize, I thought of Henry Clay's declaration : ed to the old city prison-built by the people of the United States-the common property of the nation. It is a damp, dark, loathsome building. We passed between two ranges of small stone cells, filled with blacks. We noticed five or six in a single cell which seemed scarcely large enough for a solitary tenant. The heat was suffocating. In rainy weather, the keeper told us that the prison was uncomfortably wet. In winter, there could be no fire in these cells. The keeper, with some reluctance, admitted that he received slaves from the traders, and kept them until they were sold, at thirty-four cents per day. Men of the North! it was your money which helped pile the granite of these cells, and forge the massy iron doors, for the benefit of slave traders! It is your property which is thus perverted!

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That is property which the law makes property," and that “two hundred years had sanctioned and sanctified slavery." I saw the intimate and complete connection between the planter who raises the slave for market, the dealer who buys him, the legislator who sustains and legalizes the traffic, and the northern freemen, who by his vote places that legislator in power. In the silence of my soul, I pledged myself anew to liberty; and felt at that moment the baptism of a new life-long consecration to the cause. God helping me, the resolution which I then formed, shall be fulfilled to the uttermost!

I left that prison with mingled feelings of shame, sorrow, and indignation. Before me was the great dome of the capitol; our national representatives But to me this prison had a painful and peculiar were passing and re-passing on the marble stairsinterest. It was here that Dr. Crandall, of New over all, the stripes and stars fluttered in the breeze York, was confined for several months. His health which swept down the Potomac. I was thus comwas completely broken down, and he was released pelled to realize the fact, that the abominations I had only to find a grave. Do you ask what was his looked upon, were in the District of Columbia-the crime? He had circulated among some members of chosen home of our republic-the hearthstone of our his profession, at Washington, a copy of a pamphlet national honor-that the representatives of the nawritten by myself, on the subject of slavery, and in tions of Europe here looked, at one and the same favor of freedom! Here in darkness, dampness, and glance, upon the capitol and the slave jail. Not long silence, his warm, generous heart died within before, a friend had placed in my hand, a letter from him. And this was in Washington-in the metro-Seidensticker, one of the leaders of the patriotic polis of our free country-in the nineteenth cen- movement in behalf of German liberty in 1831. It tury.

Scarcely an hour before my visit to the prison, I had been in the senate chamber of the United States. I had seen the firm lip, the broad, full brow, and beaming eye of Calhoun, the stern repose of a face written over with thought, and irradiated with the deep, still fires of genius. I had conversed with Henry Clay, once the object of my boyish enthusiasm, and encountered the fascination of his smile, and winning voice, as he playfully reproached me for deserting an old friend. I had there, in spite of my knowledge of its gross perversion to the support of wrong, felt something of that respect and reverence which is always extorted by intellectual power. For the moment I half forgot, in my appreciations of the gifts of genius with which these men have been so

was written from the prison of Celle, where he has been for eleven years a living martyr to the cause of freedom. In this letter, the noble German expresses his indignant astonishment at the speeches of Calhoun and others in Congress on the subject of slavery, and deplores the sad influence which our slave system is exerting upon the freedom of Europe. I could thus estimate in some degree the blighting effects of our union of liberty and slavery, upon the cause of political reform in the old world, strengthening the hands of the Peels and Metternichs, and deepening around the martyrs and confessors of European] freedom the cold shadow of their prisons. All that I had said or done for the cause of emancipation heretofore, seemed cold and trifling at that moment, and even now, when I am

disposed to blame the ardor and enthusiasm of some of my friends, and censure their harsh denunciations of slavery and its abettors, I think of the slave jails of the District of Columbia, and am constrained to exclaim with Jonathan Edwards, when, in his day, he was accused of fanaticism; If these things be enthusiasms, and the fruits of a distempered imagination, let me still ever more possess them." It is a very easy thing, at our comfortable northern fire, sides, to condemn and deplore the zeal and extrava. gance of abolitionists, and to reach the conclusion that slavery is a trifling matter, in comparison to the great questions of banks and sub-treasuries; but he who can visit the SLAVE MARKETS of the DISTRICT, without feeling his whole nature aroused in indignation, must be more or less than a

man.

Amesbury, 30th of 10th mo., 1843.

Shall scenes like these the dance inspire, Or wake th' enlivening notes of mirth? No! shiver'd be the recreant lyre

That gave this dark idea birth!

Other sounds, I ween, were there,
Other music rent the air,
Other waltz the warriors knew,
When they closed on Waterloo.

Forbear, till time, with lenient hand,

Has sooth'd the pangs of recent sorrow, And let the picture distant stand, The softening hue of years to borrow. When our race have passed away, Hands unborn may wake the layYet mournfully should ages view The horrid deeds at Waterloo !

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What sought they thus afar?

Bright jewels of the mine?

The wealth of seas ?-the spoils of war?-
They sought a faith's pure shrine !

Ay, call it holy ground,

The soil where first they trod!

monster that springs into existence in the increasing consumption of tea and coffee. When men dashed from their lips the wine-cup, they felt sensibly the absence of the usual stimulus, and thoughtlessly deemed that health demanded a substitute. But the appetite was morbid and artificial; and true wisdom, instead of gratifying it with opium, tobacco, tea or

They have left unstained what there they found; coffee, would dictate the entire disuse of every unFreedom to worship God.

DIETETIC REFORM.

BY JAMES SELLERS, JR.

create most of the endless stir around us."

natural stimulant. The castor has supplanted the decanter, and is faithfully nursing an appetite which may gather such strength of importunity, that men shall forget their vows and fall back to their low estate of sensuality. Individual reform does not pause. If we cease to progress, we are gradually swept back by a strong current of animality to that abyss from which we have emerged. How important, then, is the relinquishment of those fiery condiments which foster every animal passion of our nature, and disturb the equable manifestation of the loftiest sentiments of the human soul.

“A few nerves hardly visible on the surface of the tongue, DR. W. E. CHANNING. It is not essential to our view of this subject, that we consider the perfection of the physical frame the sole object of life. Either they who discard the idea that soul and body are separate entities, or they who look upon the outward man as the mere taber- It cannot be expected that any partial reform shall nacle of the spirit, must upon proper scrutiny admit secure to us that exemption from the appeals of our the superior claims of this reform, or call in question | lower nature which is the gift only of perfect obetruths which they have been wont to style self-dience. Subserviency to one appetite perpetually evident. endangers the freedom of the noblest soul. The Science and general truth through all their stages sword of the warrior will not be sheathed before the of development have tended to confirm the intuitive-knife of the butcher: and men who look complaly-perceived fact of intimate relationship and de-cently upon the death-struggle of the lamb or the ox pendence between body and mind. And now, when will scarcely shrink from the gallows, or the murthe particular branches of Physiology, Anatomy, derous scenes of war. In the refined circles of sociand Phrenology are enveloped in clustering revela-ety how many freely partake of that flesh whose tions of the same great truth, the importance of the subject under consideration is becoming more distinct. Then as a mere instrument for superior mental conception and labor, the physical frame should be regulated with an eye to the highest degree of purity and perfection.

hideousness the cook has partially concealed; and yet did necessity impose upon them the slaughter and preparation of the carcase, would well nigh faint at the bare thought of the task. To such we suggest that what we do by another is essentially the act of our own hands-that the blade of the carving

Yet, however evident this fact may be to the en-knife is dyed as deeply as that which opens the quiring mind, few as yet have felt and acknowledged vein of the struggling victim. It is said, by sensithe defects of the present dietetic habits of the race. tive ones, to be vulgar and indelicate to mention these With all the apparent ignorance which prevails things. So said the slave-holder when reminded of upon this vital matter, it is a little singular that the his lust and concubinage. But the true soul shrinks presentation of truth concerning it, almost invariably not from the utterance of truth, however it may jar awakens at least a partial response in the breast of upon the sensual ear. If the social arrangements the hearer. Thus when the standard of abstinence are such that we cannot see the work of our own from alcohol was reared in this wine-bibbing nation, hands, some friendly arm is needed to withdraw the despite the fact of its enthronement upon the dining veil which shrouds the action from the actor. Intable, the sideboard, in the dancing saloon, the select tellect recedes before the fattened herd, and moralimeeting, and even on the altar of the Church, the ty grows faint beside the meat-block, while human wine-cup was felt to be the den of a serpent as dead-sympathy sickens and dies upon the threshhold of ly in its sting, as sly in its approaches; and the the slaughter-house. How vain then will be our faithful note of warning from the earnest advocate appeals on behalf of defenceless humanity, when the of this cause, seemed to fall upon ears not entirely earth is deluged with the blood of the innocent vicinsensible to the presence of danger. The same re-tims of our lust and sensuality. To the purified mark is true of the kindred but more prevalent | palate it is a source of surprise that men do not turn draughts of tea and coffee. These dishes daily steam upon the table of the veteran tee-totaler. And the Washingtonian, dealing his resistless blows upon the hydra-head of alcohol, fails to observe the double

from the revolting diet of animal flesh and secretions, to the sweet feast of fruits and grains, which Nature has lavished upon her great board around which we are all permitted to gather. What!-says

the high-liver-would you cut us off from the generous pleasures of the table? Alas! he is indeed a short-sighted epicure who lives to eat. Only he who takes his unleavened cake to keep warm the blood in his veins, knows ought of table-pleasures in their largest sense. His is an appetite that never palls-a debauch followed by no morning aches, and bringing no ghosts of misspent hours and squandered funds.

One of the beauties of the Temperance reformation is, that upon which the changes have been much rung, and with no little justice-its wealth-giving power. The rum-bottle and the ragged-elbow are wont to be thought inseparable companions. "Many loaves of wholesome and nourishing bread cannot be reduced to a pint of poison," says the temperance economist, "without diminishing actual wealth."

Six acres of soil, any one of which would give the bread of life to three human beings, cannot exhaust their produce upon the ox that scarce sustains the gross existence of one flesh consumer, without robbing the individual and the race of that mental and moral culture which is their birth-right.

Female loveliness, cultivation and accomplishment shall be utter strangers to the farm, while dairy-slavery imposes its shackles upon our maidens, stripping them of those moments which are their inalienable right by virtue of the graces given to improve therein.

Complaint has been uttered that woman has failed to contribute her just proportion to the general treasury of science and literature; but until the crucible supplants the cream-jug, and the butter-print is relinquished for the pen, it will be folly to hope for other results. The great fact stares us in the face, that in this particular, as elsewhere, 'tis Eve that proffers the forbidden fruit to Adam. It is no cause of surprise that refined men and women shrink from labor when so much of it lies in cattle-stalls, and cow-yards. Labor, when redeemed from these and other excrescences, will be viewed as the legitimate sphere of the divine man. Woman shall then find her highest attributes dependent upon exertion, and shall throw off the doll now imposed by society, that she may assume more readily her divine character. Health and virtue both call for physical exercise, for as the humours of the system stagnate, and the muscles grow weak in a state of bodily torpidityso a life on the productions of another's labor destroys the force of conscience, and lowers the moral standard. It may be urged that society has no further claim upon him who throws into the common treasury a quota of intellect. This may be true of society, but false when applied to the individual member, for nothing short of the divine right to labor can satisfy his claims.

Much eloquence and logic has been spent latterly upon a variety of projects for that associated action whose economies shall abolish poverty, and lift the

mass from a state of perpetual delving to one of comparative leisure and freedom from toil.

Now, there is a great truth in thus banding together more closely the interests and labours of the race, yet if men will gratify their lusts by the sacrifice of the highest attainments of intelligence and morality, associated action will free them, in the pursuit of these gratifications, from a vast amount of necessary drudgery. Hence the tendency of this accumulated power will only be to pander more successfully to sensuality, unless preceded or accompanied by Dietetic Reform.

As it is an act fraught with danger to the bystanders to place in the hands of a fettered maniac the file or the saw, so may association prove a curse by placing within the reach of the sensualist superior facilities for vice than present society confers. Nothing then, can be more obvious than the fact that human progression has for its basis bodily purification. If the philanthropist would witness the overthrow of slavery, the cessation of war, the abolition of the gallows, or the triumph of temperance, let him withhold from his table carcases and condiment, and all that shall prove a snare to the pure young souls that gather around his board. And if he be an ardent lover of his race his efforts will not cease here, but his testimony will be a beacon-light upon every point of Eternity's coast the shifting waves of Time may cast him.

THOUGHTS IN A LIBRARY.

BY ANNE C. LYNCH.

Speak low-tread softly through these halls!
Here genius lives enshrined,
Here reign in silent majesty

The monarchs of the mind.
A mighty spirit-host they come

From every age and clime,-
Above the buried wrecks of years

They breast the tide of Time.

And in their presence chamber here
They hold their regal state,
And round them throng a noble train,
The gifted and the great.

Oh! child of toil! when round thy path
The storms of life arise!
And when thy brothers pass thee by

With stern unloving eyes!

Here shall the Poets chant for thee

Their sweetest, loftiest lays,
And Prophets wait to guide thy steps
In wisdom's pleasant ways.
Come, with these God-anointed kings
Be thou companion here;
And in the mighty realm of mind
Thou shalt go forth a Peer.

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