Henry Clay is cuttin' a big splurge about it. Money is bein'
raised all over the country to send it to 'em. Commodo' Decatur was a
big man for a-breakin' of it up. By smoke! they're sellin' more free
people to death and hell along Mason and Dixon's line, than up the whole
buzzum of the Mediterranean Sea."
The brown-skinned speaker was more excited now than he had been during
all the collision with Joe Johnson.
"Indeed, Phoebus, they have kidnapped several thousand people, the
Philadelphia abolitionists say, but the reports must be exaggerated. The
demand for negroes is so great, since the cotton-gin and the foreign
markets have made cotton a great staple, and the direct importation of
slaves from Africa has been stopped, that there is a great run for
border-state negroes, and free colored people seldom are righted when
they have been pulled across the line."
"They never are righted, Judge Custis! I'm ashamed of my native state.
Only a few years ago, when I was a boy, people around yer was a-freein'
of their niggers, and it was understood that slavery would a-die out,
an' everybody said, 'Let the evil thing go.' But niggers began to go up
high; they got to be wuth eight hunderd dollars whair they wasn't wuth
two hunderd; and all the politicians begun to say: 'Niggers is not fit
to be free. Niggers is the bulrush, or the bulwork, or bull-something of
our nation.' And then kidnapping of free niggers started, and the next
thing they'll kidnap free American citizens!"
"Tut! tut! James! it will never go that far.
Pages:
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207