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WHY WORK FOR THE SLAVE?

Will you not labor for the perishing? Surely, woes unutter able must move your heart. Woes unutterable! Do you doubt it? Hear a slaveholder. B. Swain, of N. Carolina, in a public address in that State in 1830, speaking of the slaves there, said:

*

"Think of the nakedness of some, the hungry yearnings of others, the flowing tears and heaving sighs of parting relations, the wailings of lamentation and wo, the bloody cut of the keen lash, and the frightful scream that rends the very skies. * * THE WORST IS NOT GENERALLY KNOWN. Were all the miseries, the horrors of slavery, to burst at once into view, a peal of seven-fold thunder could scarce strike greater alarm."

What must be the anguish of those who feel the iron enter their own souls, when a few glances at the process, could extort such language from a slaveholder?

Have the free states nothing to do with slavery? Can you ask this over the fresh grave of Lovejoy, whose murderers walk the streets at noon-day, defying the law, and laughing it to scorn, and that in a free state;-and while northern men and women go every year to the South, and become slaveholders, and not a few who remain among us, hold slaves, and grow rich on their unrequited toil? *

Do you ask if woman should meddle with slavery? See the widow of Lovejoy, left alone to rear her fatherless child. In a country where slavery thus strews with desolation a woman's hearth-stone it surely becomes woman to seek for the cause, and if possible to apply a remedy.

While your brothers, husbands and sons may at any time be

* Many merchants in New-York and elsewhere, possess southern plantations, and pretend to own many human beings.

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called, with deadly weapons, to crush, if possible, the liberty-seeking slaves, and thus fight against Jehovah,* will not you, in the spirit of love, strive for their peaceful release?

robbed of her

While woman, at our national slave.market, is children, can northern women look on in silence? And when 50 northern Representatives, with ears closed to that mother's wail, vote that your petitions for her shall NOT BE READ, will you not redouble your efforts to save your children from slavery?

Can you help working, when you learn the story of Mary Brown? She was stolen from her free parents in Washington City, held as a slave in Natchez and Vicksburgh, and now lives in Ohio. The committee who prepared the Ohio Report, of which A. Wattles was chairman, say they are assured by those who knew Mary at the South, that her statements may be implici ly relied on. manner, in telling her story, was artless and simple, bespeaking conscious truth.

Her

"She lived with her paren's unt'l the death of her mother; she was then seized and sold. One day, when near the Put mac bridge Mr. Humphreys te sheriff, verto. k her, and told her she must go with him. She inquir. d of him what for? He made no reply, but told her to come along. He took her immediately to a s ave auction. Mary told Mr. Humphreys that she was free, but he contradicted her, and the sale went on. The auctio eer son found a purchaser, and struck her off for three hundred and fify dollars, to a Mississi pi trader, and she was taken directly to the jail. After a few hours, she was handcuffed, chaine to a man slav, and started in a drove of about forty for New Orleans. The hande ffs made her wrists swell so that they were obliged to take them off at night, nd put fetters on her a kles. In the morning the handcuffs were again put on. Thus they traveled for two weeks, wading rivers, and whipp dup all day, being beaten at night, if they did not set their distance. Mary says that she frequently waded rivers i her chai s, with water up to her waist. It was in October, and the weat er eld and fios y.

"After traveling thus twelve or fifteen days, her arms and a kles became so swoll n that she felt she could go 1.0 farther. Blisters would form on her feet as large as dollars, which at night she would have to open, while all day the shakles would cut into her lacerated wrists. They had no be s, and usually slet in barns, or out on the n ked ground-was in such misery when she lay down that he could only lie and cry all night. Sul they drove them on for another week. Her spirits be ame so depressed, and she grieved so much about leaving her friends, that she could not eat, and very ime the trader caught her crying, he would beat her, accompanying it with dreadful curses.

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Mary at length became so weak, that he could travel no farther. Her frame was exhausted and sunk beneath he sufferings. She was Beized with a burning fever, and the trader, fearing he should lose her, carried her the remainder of the way in a wagon.

"When they arrived a Natchez they were all offered for sa'e, and as Mary was sti I sick, she begged that she might be sold to a kind master. She some i nes made this request in presence of purchasers-but was always insulted for it and after they were go e the trader punished her for such presumption in revealing her sickness, and thus preventing her sale. On one occasion heted her up by her hands so that

"The Almighty has no attribute which can take sides with us in such a contest."-Jefferson.

she could only touch the end of her toes to the floor. This was soon after breakfast; he kept her thus suspended, whipping her at intervals through the day-t evening he took her down. She was so much bruised that she could not lie down for more than a week afterwards."

The rest of her history while a slave is full of horror. Her case differs little from thousands, except that she escaped to reveal her wors, while they suffer and die unheard.

The case of Burditt Washington is another among the many proofs that all protection is withheld from our colored brothers and sisters, within sight of our national Capitol, while Congress shout to the slave-trader, "Here's free plunder ?"

One of the nine children sold away from him, was a daughter about eighteen. A slavetrader came to the house, seized and carried her aboard the steamboat. The aged father followed. "I then went into the hold," said he, "and found my child among the other slaves. She threw her arms about my neck and said, 'Father, I'm gone, can't you do something for me? I could'nt stay there any longer. I broke away from her." Here the old man's tears stopped his voice. After sometime, he said: "I have not seen or heard of her since. Oh, it hurts me every time I think of it."

I had this from his own lips. He was a member of a Baptist church in Alexandria. Rev. Spencer H. Cone, and Rev. Samuel Cornelius, his pastor, testified to the excellence of his character.

If such a crime had been committed upon George Washington, would it have been more wicked? Would not every voice execrate a Congress which would not hear him, or his friends, asking for relief? God is no respecter of persons. Are we like him?

We may enter into the feelings of a slave by reading the story of Maria Martin, an American woman, enslaved in Algiers. In 1800, she embarked for Cadiz, and when alm st there, was seized, carried to Algiers, and placed, alone, in a little dirty hut. Here she exclaims, "Gracious God! what were my feelings at this mo ment! In a fit of despair I seized the knife, and should have killed myself, had I not taken time for a moment's reflection."

After several years, the mate of the vessel she sailed in suc. ceeded in getting, with her, on board a ship starting for London. The coast of Algiers was fading from her sight, when the wind changed. The ship was driven back. She says: "I could dis. tinctly hear the yells of the barbarians on shore, and soon heard the motion of oars alongside. I fainted, and recovered, but to find my. self once more in the power of my unfeeling enemies. They bound the inate and myself hand and foot, and carried us on shore."

The mate was doomed to a cruel death. She was chained in a dismal cell, where she says: "The little sleep I could have, may be supposed. My body and mind sunk under suffering, and I fell ill of a burning fever. Sickness itself is sufficient to humble the mightiest mind: what then is sickness with this addition of tor. ment? The fever, the headaches, my neck swelled and inflamed with the irons enraged me almost to madness. The remembrance of my sufferings at that dreadful moment still agitates, still inflames my blood."

She was confined there two years. Think of her sufferings and then ponder well the testimony of Gen. Eaton. In a letter to his wife, dated April 6, 1799, he speaks thus of the white slaves in the Barbary States:

"Many of them have died of grief, and the others linger out a life less tolerable than death. Alas! remorse seizes my whole soul, when I reffect, that this is indeed but a copy of the barbarity which my eyes have seen in my own native country. * * Indeed, truth and justice demand from me the confession that the Christian slaves among the barbarians of Africa are treated with MORE HUMANITY than the African slaves among the professing Christians of civilized America."

What is American slavery, when he thus speaks of the recollection of it while in sight of his friends and countrymen in chains! We have a mass of testimony, fresh from the slaveholder's lips, to confirm this assertion, and rouse us to activity.

The following is from the Rutherford Gazette, a paper printed in the western part of North Carolina, and copied into the Southern Citizen, of Sept. 23, 1837:

"SUICIDE. The negro woman, [Lucy] confined in our jail as a runaway, put an end to her existence on the 28th ult. by hanging herself. Her master came to this place the day on which it occurred, and going to the jail, was recognized by the woman as her master. He had left the jail but a short time, when it was discovered that the woman had destroyed herself. We have never known an instance where so much firmness was exhibited by any person, as was by this negro. The place from which she suspended herself was not high enough to prevent her feet from touching the floor, and it was only by drawing her legs up and remaining in that position, that she succeeded in her determined purpose."

Lucy was, in effect, murdered by slavery. She cannot now describe to us the horrors from which she tried to escape, nor speak of the apprehension and despair which impelled her, thus, to seek the "king of terrors" as a shelter from American slaver.

The following facts, it will be seen, are from recent Southern papers. See what merchandize they offer for sale, with no allusion to complexion. A stranger might think the flesh-merchant was dealing in his own brothers and sisters.

OR SALE, A WOMAN, about 24 years of age, with her child, 6 years old.

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ALSO.

Wanted to purchase, a BOY from 17 to 20 years old. Apply, &c.
Augusta (Geo.) Constitutionalist, Oct. 12, 1837.

BY THOMAS N. GADSDEN.
TO-MORROW, the 24th inst, will be sold

A prime Young Fellow, named ISAAC, 18 years old, belonging to the Estate of John Carsten, deceased. Conditions cash.

Under the head of“ Auction Sales,” in the Charleston (S. C.) Courier, Nov. 23,1837.

What havoc was wrought in Virginia to procure the merchandize offered in the following notice:

The Subscribers, residing in Hamburgh, South Carolina, have just received a new supply of likely Virginia SLAVES, House servants, Cooks, Washers and Ironers, Mechanics and Field Hands.

JOSEPH WOODS & CO. [Chronicle and Sentinel, Augusta, (Geo.) Oct. 12, 1837.

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