We give the foregoing naked facts and draw no conclusions from them.
BEND. S. EDWARDS, A. LINCOLN.
TO MISS MARY SPEED--PRACTICAL SLAVERY
BLOOMINGTON, ILL., September 27, 1841.
Miss Mary Speed, Louisville, Ky.
MY FRIEND: By the way, a fine example was presented on board the boat for
contemplating the effect of condition upon human happiness. A gentleman
had purchased twelve negroes in different parts of Kentucky, and was
taking them to a farm in the South. They were chained six and six
together. A small iron clevis was around the left wrist of each, and
this fastened to the main chain by a shorter one, at a convenient
distance from the others, so that the negroes were strung together
precisely like so many fish upon a trotline. In this condition they were
being separated forever from the scenes of their childhood, their
friends, their fathers and mothers, and brothers and sisters, and many of
them from their wives and children, and going into perpetual slavery
where the lash of the master is proverbially more ruthless and
unrelenting than any other where; and yet amid all these distressing
circumstances, as we would think them, they were the most cheerful and
apparently happy creatures on board.
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