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JOHN P. SHEAHAN. 
 
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THE 
 
 AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 BY 
 
 THOMAS FOWELL BUXTON, Esq. 
 
 " This is a people robbed and spoiled ; they are all of them snared 
 in holes, and they are hid in prison houses ; they are for a prey, and 
 none delivereth ; for a spoil, and none saith, Restore." — ha. xlii. 22. 
 
 FIRST AMERICAN, FROM SECOND LONDON EDITION. 
 
 WITH AN APPENDIX. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA: 
 MERRIHEW AND THOMPSON, TRINTERS, 
 
 No. 7 Carter's Allev. 
 
 1839. 
 
2 2. C>> J 
 
 a 
 
 m FLOWERS COLLECTION 
 
 s.s.r, 
 
 # J J /At 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Preface, . 
 Introduction, 
 Extent, . 
 
 Brazil, 
 
 Cuba, 
 
 Porto Rico, .... 
 
 Buenos Ayres, &c, 
 
 The United States, 
 
 Texas, ..... 
 
 Summary, ..... 
 Corroborative Proofs of the Extent of the Slave Trade, 
 Mohammedan Slave Trade, 
 
 Summary, 
 
 Mortality, 
 
 Seizure, 
 
 March, 
 
 Detention, 
 
 Middle Passage, 
 
 Loss after Capture, 
 
 Loss after Landing, and in the Seasoning, 
 
 Summary, .... 
 
 Failure of Efforts already made for the Scppres 
 sion of the Slave Trade, 
 
 Appendix, 
 
 Conclusion. 
 
 PAGK 
 
 v. 
 
 ix. 
 
 13 
 14 
 22 
 25 
 27 
 29 
 31 
 32 
 
 a a 
 
 OO 
 
 41 
 
 49 
 
 50 
 
 51 
 
 70 
 
 80 
 
 87 
 
 126 
 
 152 
 
 139 
 
 145 
 165 
 159 
 
 
PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION 
 
 The Executive Committee of the Eastern Pennsylvania Anti- 
 Slavery Society have been induced to republish this work, — the pro- 
 duction of a distinguished philanthropist, and member of the British 
 Parliament, — from a conviction that its afflicting details of the extent 
 and augmented atrocities of the traffic in human flesh, should be 
 laid before the American public, in order that the nature of the evil 
 may be fully comprehended, and the proper remedy applied. It 
 must be obvious to all our readers, that some more efficient mea- 
 sures should be adopted for the suppression of a traffic which 
 seems heretofore to have increased in very nearly an exact ratio 
 with the efforts of the civilized world against it. The existence of 
 a ready market for human chattels on the American continent, and 
 its adjacent islands, has maintained the Slave Trade in vigorous 
 life, in despite of the dead-letter prohibitions of the United State>. 
 and the naval activity of England. The gains of the traffic have 
 been sufficiently large to counter-balance the trifling risk of 
 capture. 
 
 The United States, Texas, Brazil, and Cuba furnish, it will be 
 seen, the great markets for this trade. The high prices of slave- 
 labor products have, for some years past, rendered the demand for 
 laborers so urgent, that, in despite of all the risk of the enterprise, 
 the average profit of the trade has been 180 per cent, on the capital 
 invested in it. It is vain to think of arraying against the cupidity 
 
 of those engaged in so lucrative a traffic, the emptv terrors, the bru- 
 1* 
 
 281 
 
VI. PREFACE. 
 
 tern fulmen, of the laws which stamp it as piracy. Even if 
 our own country exerted her utmost power in good faith to enforce 
 those laws, the temptation to their violation would be strong enough 
 to counteract the increased danger and difficulty ; and with the 
 incentives of enormous gain before him, the slave-trader would 
 continue his hateful traffic, if the entire African sea-board were 
 lined with the navies of all Christendom. 
 
 What then remains to be done 1 Shall the traffic go on ? 
 " Shall the sword devour for ever ?" Shall Africa, torn and bleed- 
 ing, forever lift up her hands imploringly for protection from Chris- 
 tian cupidity ? 
 
 The plan proposed by Thomas Fowell Buxton, viz., commercial 
 intercourse with Africa, appears to us more ingenious than effec- 
 tual. He believes much may be done for the suppression of this 
 monstrous traffic by a vigorous effort on the part of the British Go- 
 vernment to open a trade with Africa, and make it the interest of 
 the African kings and slave traders to turn their attention to more 
 honest branches of trade and industry. A longtime must neces- 
 sarily elapse before this could have any sensible influence on the 
 traffic, even under the most favorable circumstances. The natives 
 of Africa now engaged in this horrible commerce, unsettled, restless, 
 and warlike, could not be easily persuaded to abandon the savage 
 exciten ents of their predatory excursions and horrible man-hunts, 
 for the dull routine of an agricultural life, and the details of a petty 
 traffic. At best it is a doubtful expedient,— for amelioration, not 
 for abolition. The market for slaves is still left open, and it needs 
 no vision of prophecy to foresee that that market, while it conti- 
 nues, must be supplied. Let the market then be broken up. Strike 
 at the parent, the fosterer, the sole supporter of the Slave Trade — 
 SLAVERY itself. Let the moral and political power of England 
 
PREFACE. Vll. 
 
 be directed upon the slave system, wherever it exists. Let her 
 Government impose heavy duties upon slave-grown products. The 
 abolitionists of Great Britain have it in their power to induce the 
 government to adopt such a measure. They have now a control- 
 ling political influence. At their demand, the apprenticeship sys- 
 tem was abandoned; and more recently, the importation of the Hill 
 Coolies of British India to the West India Colonies, under the ex- 
 press sanction of the government, was prohibited in consequence of 
 their remonstrances. By a vigorous and united effort, the slave- 
 cursed cotton and rice of America might be excluded from British 
 ports, to give place to the rice of Patna, and the cotton of Bengal. 
 Our friends on the other side of the water have been reminded of 
 their power and responsibility in this matter by one of their bitterest 
 enemies, the slave-proprietor Gladstone, who resisted, in the Bri- 
 tish Parliament, to the last, every measure of Emancipation. In 
 his speech on the 30th of the Third month, 1838, against the abo- 
 lition of the apprenticeship system, he thus taunted his zealous op- 
 ponents : 
 
 " You (said the honorable gentleman) who are so sick with ap- 
 prenticeship in the West Indies — you who cannot wait for twenty- 
 four months, when the apprentices will be free, are you aware what 
 responsibility lies upon every one of you at this moment, with refer- 
 ence to the cultivation of cotton in America 1 There are 3,000,000 
 of slaves in America. America does not talk of abolition, nor of 
 the amelioration of slavery. It is a domestic institution, which ap- 
 pears destined to descend to the posterity of that free people ; and 
 who are responsible for this enormous growth of what appears to 
 be eternal slavery ] Is it not the demard that creates this 
 supply, and is it not the consumption of cotton from whence that 
 demand arises? You consume 318,000,000 lbs. of cotton which 
 proceed from slave-labor, and only 45,000,000 lbs. which proceed 
 from free labor; and that too while you have the means in India, 
 at a very little expense, of obtaining all you require from free 
 labor." 
 
 That this might be done without any detriment to the commer- 
 
Mil. PREFACE. 
 
 cial and manufacturing interests of the country, we cannot doubt. 
 A late number of the London Morning Herald, makes the follow- 
 ing remarks on this subject: — 
 
 "England might (if the proper degree of care were bestowed up- 
 on its cultivation) be supplied with a sufficiency of COTTON 
 
 FOR ALL HER MANUFACTURING ESTABLISHMEXTS ; — Day, when 
 
 regard is had to the character of the cotton manufacture, and to the 
 claims of her colonies upon England, it may be doubted, whether 
 the cotton trade might not be transferred gradually and most bene- 
 ficially to the shores of India. India yields the raw material of the 
 manufacture. 
 
 There can at all events, exist no question as to the expediency 
 of procuring from India those supplies of raw cotton which we 
 have hitherto drawn from the United States. India bids fair soon 
 to supply us with tea — why not with cotton 1" 
 
 It is to be hoped that the readers of the painful facts detailed in 
 the following pages, will feel themselves summoned, as by a voice 
 from the suffering millions of Africa, to engage at once in the 
 efforts now making to destroy the Slave Trade, by annihilating its 
 cause; — and that, instead of looking to temporizing expedients for 
 the mitigation of the evil, they will, from henceforth, lay the axe 
 at the root, until that poison tree of lust and blood, and of all abo- 
 minable and heartless iniquity, shall fall before them, and Law, and 
 Love, and God, and Man, shout victory over the ruin. 
 
 Philadelphia, Eighth month, 1839. 
 
IXTRODUCTIO N. 
 
 We attempt to put down the Slave Trade " by the strong hand" 
 alone; and this is, I apprehend, the cause of our failure. Our 
 system, in many respects too feeble, is in one sense too bold. The 
 African has acquired a taste for the productions of the civilized 
 world. They have become essential to him. The parent, — de- 
 based and brutalized as he is, — barters his child ; the chief his sub- 
 ject ; each individual looks with an evil eye on his neighbor, and 
 lays snares to catch him — because the sale of children, subjects, and 
 neighbors, is the only means as yet afi\rded by European com- 
 merce, for the supply of those wants which that commerce has 
 created. To say that the African, under present circumstances, 
 shall not deal in man, is to say that he shall long in vain for his 
 accustomed gratifications. The tide, thus pent up, will break its 
 way over every barrier. In order effectually to divert the stream 
 from the direction which it has hitherto taken, we must open an- 
 other, a safer, and a more convenient channel. When we shall 
 have experimentally convinced the African that it is in his power to 
 obtain his supplies in more than their usual abundance, by honest 
 means, then, and not till then, we- may expect that he will be re- 
 conciled to the abolition of the Slave Trade. 
 
 This work does not fully carry into effect the design with which 
 it was commenced. To a description of the extent and horrors of 
 the Slave Trade, the failure of our efforts for its suppression, and 
 the capabilities of Africa for legitimate commerce, I had intended to 
 add some practical suggestions for calling forth the latent energies 
 of that quarter of the globe, and for exhibiting to its inhabitants 
 where their true interest lies. 
 
 Upon consideration it appeared that a premature disclosure of 
 these suggestions might be inconvenient ; I therefore withhold that 
 part of my subject for the present, with the intention of resuming it 
 hereafter ; but, although I am disabled from entering into detail, 
 and consequently from rendering this work as practically useful as 
 I had hoped, it may not be altogether without benefit to expose, to 
 the public eye, the atrocities which to this day are in full operation 
 
 * We have omitted a part of the intraduction, which in our view was not 
 essential to a fair understanding of the motives and sentiments of the author. 
 
 Ed. 
 
X. INTRODUCTION. 
 
 in that land of misery, and to point out the source from which, as 
 I believe, a remedy can alone be hoped for. 
 
 The principles of my suggestion are comprised in the following 
 proposition: — 
 
 1. That the present staple export of Africa renders to her inhabit- 
 ants, at infinite cost, a miserable return of profit. 
 
 2. That the cultivation of her soil, and the barter of its produc- 
 tions, would yield an abundant harvest, and a copious supply of 
 those articles which Africa requires. 
 
 3. That it is practicable to convince the African, experimentally, 
 of the truth of these propositions, and thus to make him our con- 
 federate in the suppression of the Slave Trade. 
 
 I despair of being able to put down a traffic in which a vast con- 
 tinent is engaged, by the few ships we can afford to employ : as 
 auxiliaries they are of great value, but alone they are insufficient. 
 I do not dream of attempting to persuade the African, by appealing 
 merely to his reason or his conscience, to renounce gainful gujlt, 
 and to forego those inhuman pursuits which gratify his cupidity, 
 and supply his wants. But when the appeal we make is to his in- 
 terest, and when his passions are enlisted on our side, there is no- 
 thing chimerical in the hope that he may be brought to exchange 
 slender profits, with danger, for abundant gain, with security and 
 peace. 
 
 If these views can be carried into effect, they have at least thus 
 much to recommend to them. 
 
 They ivill not plunge t he country into hostility with any portion 
 of the civilised world, for they involve no violation of international 
 law. We may cultivate intercourse and innocent commerce with 
 the natives of Africa, without abridging the rights or damaging the 
 honest interests of any rival power. 
 
 They require no monopoly of trade ,• if o%er nations choose to 
 send their merchantment to carry on legitimate traffic in Africa, 
 they will but advance our object, and lend their aid in extinguish- 
 ing that which we are resolved to put down. 
 
 They involve no schemes of conquest ; our ambition is of another 
 order. Africa is now torn to pieces. She is the victim of the most 
 iron despotism that the world ever saw : inveterate cruelty reigns 
 over her broad territory. We desire to usurp nothing, — and to 
 conquer nothing, — but the Slave Trade. 
 
 Finally, we ask of the Government only that which subjects have 
 aright to expect from their rulers, namely, protection to person 
 and property in their lawful pursuits. 
 
 Here I must pause ; for I feel bound to confess, much as it may 
 tend to shake the whole fabric of my views, that there is a great 
 danger to which we shall be exposed, unless it be most carefully 
 
INTRODUCTION. XI. 
 
 guarded against at the outset : the discovery of the fact that man 
 as a laborer on the soil is superior in value to man as an article of 
 merchandise may induce the continuance, if not the increase, of 
 that internal slavery which now exists in Africa. 
 
 I hope we shall never be so deluded as to give the slightest tole- 
 ration to anything like constrained labor. We must not put down 
 one iniquity by abetting another. 1 believe implicitly that free la- 
 bor will beat all other labor ; that slavery, besides being a great 
 crime, is a gross blunder; and that the most refined and sagacious 
 policy we can pursue is common honesty and undeviating justice. 
 Let it then be held as a most sacred principle that, wherever our 
 authority prevails, slavery shall cease ; and that whatever influence 
 we may obtain, shall be employed in the same direction. 
 
 I have thus noticed several of the negative advantages which at- 
 tach to these views, and I have frankly stated the danger which, as 
 I conceive, attends them. I shall now briefly allude to one point, 
 which, I own, weighs with me beyond all the other considera- 
 tions, mighty as they are, which this great question involves. 
 
 Grievous, and this almost beyond expression, as are the physical 
 evils endured by Africa, there is yet a more lamentable feature in 
 her present condition. Bound in the chains of the grossest igno- 
 rance, she is a prey to the most savage superstition. Christianity 
 has made but feeble inroads on this kingdom of darkness, nor can 
 she hope to gain an entrance where the traffic in man pre-occupies 
 the ground. But were this obstacle removed, Africa would present 
 the finest field for the labors of Christian missionaries which the 
 world has yet seen opened to them. I have no hesitation in stating 
 my belief that there is in the negro race a capacity for receiving the 
 truths of the Gospel beyond most other heathen nation? ; while, on 
 the other hand, there is this remarkable, if not unique, circumstance 
 in their case — that a race of teachers of their own blood is already 
 in course of rapid preparation for them; that the providence of God 
 has overruled even slavery and the Slave Trade for this end; and 
 that from among the settlers of Sierra Leone, the peasantry of the 
 West Indies, and the thousands of their children, now receiving 
 Christian Education, may be expected to arise a body of men who 
 will return to the land of their fathers, carrying Divine truth and 
 all its concomitant blessings into the heart of Africa. 
 
 One noble sacrifice in behalf of the negro race has already been 
 made. In the words of the most eloquent citizen of another nation, 
 "Great Britain, loaded with an unprecedented debt, and with a 
 grinding taxation, contracted a new debt of a hundred million dol- 
 lars to give freedom, not to Englishmen, but to the degraded Afri- 
 can. I know not that history records an act so disinterested, so 
 sublime. In the progress of ages England's naval triumphs will 
 
Xll. INTRODUCTION. 
 
 shrink into a more and more narrow space in the records of our 
 race. This moral triumph will fill a broader, brighter page."* 
 
 Another, it may be a more inveterate evil, remains, — an evil 
 which for magnitude and malignity stands without a parallel. One 
 thousand human victims (if my facts will bear sifting) are daily 
 required to feed this vast and devouring consumer of mankind. In 
 Vain has nature given to Africa noble rivers; man is the only mer- 
 chandise they carry. In vain a fertile land; — lavish in wild and 
 spontaneous productions, no cultivating hand calls forth its riches. 
 In vain has she placed it in the vicinity of civilization and Chris- 
 tianity ; within a few weeks' voyage of the Thames there is a peo- 
 ple who worship the shark and the snake, and a prince who ima- 
 gines the agency of an evil spirit in the common properties of the 
 loadstone.-j- Africa is indeed encircled by an effectual barrier 
 against the entrance of commerce, cultivation, and Christianity. 
 That barrier is the Slave Trade. 
 
 It may be thought wild extravagance to indulge the hope that 
 evils so rank are capable of cure. I do not deny that it is, of all 
 tasks, the most arduous, or that it will require the whole energy of 
 Great Britain; but if it shall be made a capital object of British 
 policy, for the accomplishment of which our whole strength, if ne- 
 cessary, shall be put forward, and if it shall be, as I am sure it is, a 
 cause in which we may look for Divine countenance and help, I see 
 no reason for despair. What has been done, may be done again ; 
 and it is matter of history, that from superstitions as bloody, from a 
 state of intellect as rude, and from the Slave Trade itself, a nation 
 has been reclaimed, and now enjoys in comparison with Africa, a 
 blaze of light, liberty, religion, and happiness. That nation is 
 Great Britain. What we find the African, the Romans found us; 
 and it is not unreasonable to hope that, in the language of Mr. Pitt, 
 "even Africa will enjoy, at length, in the evening of her days, 
 those blessings which have descended so plentifully upon us in a 
 much earlier period of the world." 
 
 * Dr. dimming. t Laird, vol. i. p. 219. 
 
THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 "You will perceive that this horrid traffic has been carried on to an 
 extent that almost staggers belief." 
 
 Commodore Sir Robert blends, Sierra Leone. 
 
 In preparing this work, my chief purpose has been 
 to offer some views which I entertain of the most 
 effectual mode of suppressing the Slave Trade; but 
 before I enter upon these, I must state the extent to 
 which that traffic is now carried on, and the sacrifice 
 of human life which it occasions. 
 
 Extent. 
 
 My first proposition is, that upwards of 150,000 hu- 
 man beings are annually conveyed from Africa, across 
 the Atlantic, and sold as slaves. 
 
 It is almost impossible to arrive at the exact extent 
 to which any contraband trade, much more a trade so 
 revolting, is carried on. It is the interest of those con- 
 cerned in it to conceal all evidence of guilt; and the 
 Governor of a Portuguese colony is not very likely, at 
 once to connive at the crime, and to confess that it is 
 extensively practised. By the mode of calculation I pro- 
 pose to adopt, it is very possible I may err; but the error 
 must be on the right side; I may underrate, it is almost 
 impossible that I can exaggerate, the extent of the traffic. 
 With every disposition on the part of those who are en- 
 gaged in it to veil the truth, certain facts have, from time 
 to time, transpired, sufficient to show, if not the full 
 amount of the evil, at least, that it is one of prodigious 
 magnitude. 
 
 2 
 
14 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 I commence with what appears to be the most consi- 
 derable slave market, viz. — that of 
 
 Brazil. 
 
 In the papers on the subject of the Slave Trade annu- 
 ally presented to Parliament, by authority of his Majesty 
 (and entitled, "Class A" and " Class B",) the follow- 
 ing official information is given by the British Vice 
 Consul at Rio de Janeiro, as to the number of slaves 
 imported there : — 
 
 From 1 July to 31 Dec. 1827 . . . 15,481* 
 From 1 Jan. to 31 March, 1828 . . 15,483f 
 From 1 April to 30 June, 1828, say » 11,532^: 
 From 1 July to 31 Dec. 1828 .. . 24,488§ 
 From 1 Jan. to 30 June, 1829 . . . 25,179j| 
 From 1 July to 31 Dec. 1829 . . . 22,81311 
 From 1 Jan to 30 June, 1830 .. . 33,964** 
 
 148,940 
 
 That is in the twelve months 
 
 preceding the 30th June, 1828 . . 42,964 
 
 1829 . . 49,667 
 
 " 1830 . . 56,777 
 
 148,940 
 
 Thus it stands confessed, upon authority which can- 
 not be disputed, that from the 1st of July, 1827, to the 
 30th of June, 1830 (three years,) there were brought 
 into the single port of Rio de Janeiro, 148,940 negroes, 
 or, on an average, 49,643 annually. It appears also, 
 
 * Class B, 1828, p. 105. j Class B, 1828, p. 107. 
 
 i No returns. These numbers are given on the average of the 
 three months previous to, and three months subsequent to the dates 
 here mentioned. 
 
 § Class B, 1829, pp. 80, 81. || Class B, 1829, p. 89. 
 
 1 Ditto, 1830, p. 71. ** Ditto, 1830, p. 78. 
 
EXTENT BRAZIL. 15 
 
 that, in the last year, the number was swelled to 56,777 
 per annum.* 
 
 Caldcleugh, in his Travels in South America, speak- 
 ing of the Slave Trade at Rio, (which however, was not 
 then so extensive as it now is.) states, " that there are 
 three other ports in Brazil trading to the same extent ^l 
 If this be correct, the number of negroes annually im- 
 ported vastly exceeds any estimate I have formed; but 
 it is more safe to rely on the authority of the British 
 Commissioners, i scanty as it necessarily is. They re- 
 side in the capital ; and their distance from the three 
 outports of itself might render it difficult for them to 
 obtain full information. But when to the distance is ad- 
 ded the still greater difficulty arising from the anxiety 
 on the part of almost all the Brazilian functionaries to 
 suppress information on the subject, it is clearly to be 
 inferred that the number stated by the Commissioners 
 must fall materially below the truth. They tell us, how- 
 ever, that in a year and a-half, from 1st of January, 
 1829, tu 30ih of June, 1630, the numbers imported 
 were, into 
 
 Bahia , 22,202 
 
 Pernambuco .... 8,079 
 
 Marenham . . . . . 1,252 
 
 31,533 
 
 *I see in the Patriot newspaper of the 25th June last (1838) 
 the following statement: — "A Brazil mail has brought advices 
 from Rio to the 22d April. That fine country appears to be 
 making rapid strides in civilization and improvement ; the only 
 drawback is the inveterate and continued encouragement of the 
 slave trade. The Rover corvette had just captured two slavers, 
 having 494 negroes on board ; and the traffic is said to amount to 
 60,000 annually, into Rio alone, almost entirely carried on under 
 Portuguese colors. 
 
 \ Caldcleugh's Travels, London, 1825, vol. ii. p. 56. 
 
 i By the treaties with foreign powers for the suppression of the 
 Slave Trade, Commissioners are appointed to act as Judges, in a 
 Court of Mixed Commission for the adjudication of captured slave- 
 vessels. 
 
16 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 To these we must also add those 
 
 imported into the port of Para . 799 
 
 Total in eighteen months . . 32,332* 
 
 Or annually .... 21,554 
 
 To which add Rio, as before statedf 56,777 
 
 And we have for the annual number 
 
 landed in Brazil . . . 78,331 
 
 So many, at least, were landed. That number is un- 
 disputed. The amount, however, great as it is, probably 
 falls short of the reality. If the question were put to me, 
 what is the number which I believe to be annually land- 
 ed in Brazil ? I should rate it considerably higher. I 
 conceive that the truth lies between the maximum as 
 taken from Caldcleugh, and the minimum as stated in 
 the Official Returns ; and I should conjecture that the 
 real amount would be moderately rated at 100,000, 
 brought annually into these five Brazilian puils. But 
 as the question is, not how many I suppose, but how 
 many I can show, to be landed, I must confine myself to 
 what I can prove; and I have proved that 78,331 were 
 landed at five ports in Brazil, in the course of twelve 
 months, ending at the 30th June, 1830. 
 
 But is it easy to believe, while Brazil receives so vast 
 a number into five of her principal ports, that the trade 
 is confined to them, and that none are introduced along 
 the remaining line of her coast, extending over 38 de- 
 grees of latitude, or about 2,600 miles, and abounding 
 in harbours, rivers, and creeks, where disembarkation 
 can easily be effected 1 
 
 It may safely be assumed, that the slave-trader would 
 desire to avoid notoriety, and to escape the duty which 
 is paid upon all imports ; either of these motives may 
 induce him to smuggle his negroes ashore. That num- 
 
 * Class B, 1829, 1830. |P. 3. 
 
EXTENT BRAZIL. 17 
 
 bers are so smuggled, is established by the fact, that 
 most vessels from the coast of Africa report themselves 
 in ballast on arriving at Bahia. In the last Parliament- 
 ary Papers,* more than half the vessels are found to 
 have reported themselves in ballast, and the remainder 
 to have come from Prince's Island, Ajuda (Wydah,) 
 and Angola, the very places where the Slave Trade 
 most prevails,f The Commissioners interpret these re- 
 turns in ballast thus : — " In the six months ending 30th 
 June, 1836, twenty vessels entered this port (Rio) from 
 the coast of Africa ; they came in ballast, and, upon 
 the usual declaration, that the master or pilot had died 
 on the voyage, were stopped, with scarcely an excep- 
 tion, by the police, on suspicion of having landed slaves 
 on the coast ; but as usual also, were, after a few days 
 detention, released. "J The Juiz di Direito, of Una 
 Grande, one of the few functionaries who appears to 
 have done his duty with respect to the Slave Trade, and 
 whose activity has been rewarded, on the part of the 
 populace, by attempts on his life, and on the part of the 
 Brazilian Government, as I have been informed, by 
 dismissal from his office,) confirms this view of the Com- 
 missioners in a Report, dated 12th November, 1834, in 
 which he says : — " I see that in the trade in Africans 
 brought to this district, are committed almost the whole 
 population of this place, and of the neighboring dis- 
 trict." " Here, since I have been in the district, there 
 have been twenty-two disembarkations, which I can 
 remember ; and I can assure your Excellency, that 
 an equal, or even a greater number, have called off 
 this port ; and it is certain that thev did not return to 
 Africa."^ 
 
 It is, then, clear that, over and above the number 
 annually introduced into the five ports, negroes are 
 landed along the line of the Brazilian coast ; but as we 
 
 * Class B, 1837, and Class B, Farther Series, 1837. 
 f Class B, 1837, p. 83. t Class A, 1836, p. 251, 
 § Class B, 1834, p. 233. 
 2* 
 
18 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 have no facts to guide us to the precise number, I will 
 assume that the trading in slaves is confined to these 
 five places, and that not a single negro was landed in 
 Brazil beyond the 78,331 negroes in twelve months, 
 ending in June, 1830. 
 
 I admit that this proves little, as to the Slave Trade 
 at the present time. It is very possible that it raged at 
 a former period, but that it has now ceased ; and it may 
 be argued that the facts stated were prior to the treaty 
 with Great Britain, and that the operation of that treaty 
 has considerably reduced the number. If we are to be- 
 lieve the official reports made to our Government, it ib 
 just the reverse. The Slave Trade has increased since 
 that time. The Brazilian minister of Marine recom- 
 mends to his government the formation of a "cordon 
 sanitaire, which may prevent the access to our shores 
 of those swarms of Africans that are continually poured 
 forth from vessels engaged in so abominable a traffic."* 
 This, be it observed, was on the 17th of June, 1833, 
 three years after the treaty had come into opera- 
 tion. 
 
 The Ministers of Foreign Affairs and of Justice, in 
 their report of the Chamber of Deputies, in 1835, speak 
 " of the continuance of the traffic, to an extent at once 
 frightful to humanity, and alarming to the best interests 
 of the country." " The fury of this barbarous traffic 
 continues every day to increase with a constantly pro- 
 gressing force." "Sixteen hundred ne;v blacks are 
 openly maintained on an estate in the neighborhood of 
 Ilha Grande." " The continued — we might almost say 
 the uninterrupted — traffic in slaves is carrying on, on 
 these coasts."f On the 17th June, 1836, Mr. Gore 
 Ouseley, British resident at Rio Janeiro, states in his 
 despatch, that " The Slave Trade is carried on in Bra- 
 
 * Class A, 1833, p. 58. 
 t Class A, 1835, p. 265. 
 
EXTENT — BRAZIL. 19 
 
 zil with more activity than ever."* In the preceding 
 May, in a despatch to Viscount Palmerston, he speaks 
 of "an association of respectable persons who were go- 
 ing to use steamboats for the importation of Afri- 
 cans, "f 
 
 In March, 1836, the President of Bahia observed, in 
 a speech to the assembly of that province, " That the 
 contraband in slaves continues with the same scandal. "± 
 In the following September the British Commissioners 
 say, "At no period, perhaps, has the trade been ever 
 carried on with more activity or daring. "§ And again, 
 in November, 1836, "The traffic in slaves is every- 
 day becoming more active and notorious on this 
 coast."|| 
 
 Thus, then, not only by the reports of our Commis- 
 sioners and our Resident, but by the admission of the 
 Brazilians themselves, it appears that the Slave Trade 
 has increased since the treaty was formed. It seems 
 hardly necessary to add, that I have received letters to 
 the same effect from gentlemen on whom I have entire 
 reliance. A naval officer, in a letter dated 16th Sep- 
 tember, 1835, says, "For the last six months the im- 
 portation of new slaves is greater than ever remember- 
 ed." A gentleman writes to me, of date 7th April, 
 1837, " It may be well to acquaint you, that the Slave 
 Trade has now got to an unprecedented pitch." 
 
 The Parliamentary Papers presented in 1838, re- 
 markably confirm the two positions w r hich I have laid 
 down ; first, that the Slave Trade is enormous ; and, 
 secondly, that so far from abating, it has increased since 
 the period when the treaty was formed. 
 
 By a private letter from a highly respectable quarter, 
 I learn that in the month of December, 1836, the im- 
 
 * Class B, 1836, p. 68. f Class B, 1836, p. 67. 
 
 * Class A, 1836, p. 231. § Class A, 1836, p. 250. 
 
 i Class A, 1836, p. 260. 
 
20 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 portation of slaves into the province of Rio alone was 
 
 not less than ...... 4,831 
 
 Our Minister at Rio states that there arrived 
 
 in the following month of January, 1837, 4,870* 
 
 February l,992f 
 
 March 7,395^ 
 
 April 5,596§ 
 
 May 2,753|| 
 
 27,437 
 
 Thus, within six months, in the province of Rio, or the 
 vicinity, there were known to have been landed this vast 
 number. This is hardly disputed by the Brazilian au- 
 thorities. Our Minister at Rio, in a letter to Lord Pal- 
 merston, dated 18th April, 1837, speaking of 7,395 ne- 
 groes landed in the preceding month, says : "As a 
 satisfactory proof of the general accuracy of these re- 
 ports, it may be observed here, that the Government 
 has excepted two only of the numerous items they com- 
 prehend. "IT 
 
 It would be an error to suppose that these reported 
 numbers comprehend anything like the whole amount 
 of the importations : conclusive evidence to the contrary 
 appears in a variety of passages of the same reports. 
 I shall take but one as an instance. Mr. Hamilton, in 
 his enclosure of 1st March, 1837, states as follows : 
 " Brig Johovah from Angola. This vessel, since she 
 left this port, thirteen months ago, has made three 
 voyages without entering any port. The first voyage 
 she landed 700 slaves, very sickly, at Ponta Negra, 
 about halfway betwixt this port and Cape Frio; on the 
 second voyage, 600 slaves at the island of St. Sebas- 
 tian ; and on the present voyage, 520 slaves at Tapier, 
 close to the entrance of this port. The greater number 
 
 * Class B, 1837, p. 58. § Class B, 1837, p. 65. 
 
 f Ibid. 60. || Ibid. 71. 
 
 $ Ibid. 64. J Class B, 1837, p. 63. 
 
EXTENT BRAZIL. 21 
 
 of these last were put into boats and fishing canoes, and 
 brought to town."* The last number, namely 520, 
 only, are reported in the return for the month of Feb- 
 ruary preceding; but the remaining 1300 have not ap- 
 peared in any returns. It is evident from this, as well 
 as many other passages, that vessels land their negroes 
 on the coast, and return direct to Africa; and all who do 
 so, escape notice, and are not included in the account. 
 If these 1300 are added to the returns for the first six 
 months in the year 1837, the importations into Rio 
 alone for this year will exceed these of 1830. 
 
 So much for the province of Rio. I would next 
 observe as to Pernambuco. In a letter from Mr. 
 Watts, the British Consul, to Lord Palmerston, of date 
 5th May, 1837, he says, " I have just received direc- 
 tions to furnish Mr. Hamilton with a monthly return of 
 vessels arriving from the coast of Africa, at any port 
 within my consulate," &c. ; and he adds, " the supine- 
 ness, not to say connivance, of the (government of 
 Braz.il in general on the subject in reference, the gross 
 venality of subordinate officers, the increasing demand 
 of hands for the purposes of husbandry, the enormous 
 profits derivable from this inhuman traffic, which is ra- 
 pidly increasing at this port in the most undisguised 
 manner, combined with the almost insuperable difficulty 
 of procuring authentic information through private 
 channels from the dread of the assassin's knife or 
 bullet, even in the open day, and in the public gaze ; 
 and the dark and artful combinations of the dealers in 
 slaves, their agents, and the agriculturists, to mask and 
 facilitate the disembarkation of imported slaves ; — all 
 these glaring and obstructive facts combine to render 
 the attainment of authentic data on which to ground 
 effective official representation on the subject of the un- 
 precedented increase of the Slave Trade all along the 
 coast of Brazil, an almost insurmountable obstacle."! 
 
 * Class B, 1837, p. 60. f Class B, 1837, p. 84. 
 
22 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 The case then may be stated thus : prior to the treaty, 
 the annual importation of negroes intone ports of Bra- 
 zil, was 78,333, to which might be added the indefinite 
 but considerable number smuggled into other places in 
 Brazil. Since that time the trade has, by general tes- 
 timony, increased. Notwithstanding the difficulty 
 thrown in the way of obtaining information, the facts 
 which we have been enabled to glean, demonstrate what 
 the Marquis of Barbacena stated in the Senate of Bra- 
 zil on the 30th of June, 1837, namely, " That it may 
 be safely asserted, without fear of exaggeration, that 
 during the last three years, the importation has been 
 much more considerable, than it had ever before been 
 when the commerce was unfettered and legal."* On 
 these grounds we might be entitled to make a consider- 
 able addition. It is enough for us to know, that, at the 
 very least, 78,333 human beings are annually torn from 
 Africa, and are imported into Brazil. 
 
 Cuba. 
 
 It is scarcely practicable to ascertain the number of 
 slaves imported into Cuba : it can only be a calculation 
 on, at best, doubtful data. We are continually told by 
 the Commissioners, that difficulties are thrown in the 
 way of obtaining correct information in regard to the 
 Slave Trade in that Island. Everything that artifice, 
 violence, intimidation, popular countenance, and official 
 connivance can do, is done, to conceal the extent of the 
 traffic. Our ambassador, Mr. Villiers, April, 1837, 
 says, " That a privilege (that of entering the harbor 
 after dark) denied to all other vessels, is granted to the 
 slave-trader; and, in short, that with the servants of 
 the Government, the misconduct of the persons con- 
 nected in this trade finds favor and protection. The 
 crews of captured vessels are permitted to purchase 
 
 * Class B, 1837, p. 69. 
 
EXTENT CUBA. 23 
 
 their liberation ; and it would seem that the persons 
 concerned in this trade have resolved upon setting the 
 Government of the mother country at defiance."* 
 Almost the only specific fact which I can collect from 
 the reports of the Commissioners, is the statement, " that 
 1635 presents a number of slave vessels (arriving at the 
 Havana) by which there must have been landed, at the 
 very least, 15,000 negroes."f But in an official letter, 
 dated 28th May, 1836, there is the following remarka- 
 ble passage : — " I wish I could add, that this list con- 
 tains even one-fourth of the number of those which 
 have entered after having landed cargoes, or sailed 
 after having refitted in this harbor.":}: This would give 
 an amount of 60,000 for the Havana alone ; but is Ha- 
 vana the only port in Cuba in which negroes are land- 
 ed 1 The reverse is notoriously true. The Commis- 
 sioner says, " I have every reason to believe that several 
 of the other ports of Cuba, more particularly the distant 
 city of St. Jago de Cuba, carry on the traffic to a con- 
 siderable extent." Indeed, it is stated by Mr. Hardy, 
 the consul at St. Jago, in a letter to Lord Palmerston, 
 of the 18th February, 1837, "That the Portuguese 
 brig, Boca Negra, landed on the 6th inst. at Juragua, 
 a little to windward of this port, (St. Jago,) 400 Afri- 
 cans of all ages, and subsequently entered this port."§ 
 But in order that we may be assuredly within the mark, 
 no claim shall be made on account of these distant 
 ports. Confining ourselves to the Havana, it would 
 seem probable, if it be not demonstrated, that the num- 
 ber for that port, a fortiori, for the whole island, may 
 fairly be estimated at 60,000. || I have many strong 
 
 * Class B, 1837, p. 2. f Class A, 1835, p. 206. 
 
 * Class A, 1836, p. 153. § Class B, 1837, p. 29. 
 
 1) The Slave Trade. — "It has occurred to us now that the 
 Spaniards and Portuguese are pushing the inhuman traffic with so 
 much zeal and energy, whether it would not be preferable to em- 
 ploy steamers than sailing vessels in cruising about that grand re- 
 
24 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 grounds for believing that this is no exaggeration, one 
 of which I will name. At a meeting which I had with 
 several merchants and captains of vessels trading to 
 the coast of Africa, I inquired what was the proportion 
 of the slave trade with Cuba compared with that of 
 Brazil ? Captain M'Lean, governor of Cape Coast 
 Castle (than whom no one has better opportunities of 
 information, as all the vessels, from the Bight of Benin, 
 in their way to St. Thomas, pass his fort,) stated that, 
 as far as he could judge, there were three for Cuba, to 
 two for Brazil, and in this opinion every person pre- 
 sent on the occasion concurred.* 
 
 Having proved that there are landed in Brazil at 
 least 78,000, this would give to Cuba more than 
 100,000. But let the minor number be taken as de- 
 duced from the reports of the Commissioners, and the 
 account will stand thus : — 
 
 ceptacle of stolen Africans, the island of Cuba. We have heard it 
 stated that upwards of sixty vessels per month arrive in Cuba 
 from the coast of Africa with slaves. Supposing that each vessel, 
 on an average, carries two hundred of these, and that the number 
 of arrivals continue the same for one year certain, we should have 
 the incredible number of one hundred and forty-four thousand 
 slaves imported into that colony in twelve months ! Although we 
 cannot believe that the trade is carried on to this extent, still we 
 think the Government is called upon to resort to prompt and vigo- 
 rous measures to repress, if not put a stop to it. Whether steam- 
 ers would be preferable to schooners, such as were previously 
 employed, we are not seamen enough to decide; certainly the 
 slavers would have less chance of escape from the former than the 
 latter." — Watchman, February 21, 1838. 
 
 * Since the above went to press, I have learnt on good authority, 
 " that there have been about 100,000 boxes of sugar, of 400 lbs. 
 each, exported from Cuba during (he season just closed, (July, 
 1838,) more than in any preceding;" and that a very intelligent 
 merchant in that island had declared, " that he knew of no fewer 
 than forty new estates that had been lately opened, remembering 
 that it will take about two years to make them productive." 
 
EXTENT PORTO RICO. 25 
 
 Cuba, .... 60,000 
 
 Brazil, .... 78,333 
 
 138,333 
 
 To this number of slaves actually landed, 
 must be added those who have been cap- 
 tured, which on the average of the years 
 1836 and 1837, was at Sierra Leone, . 7,852 
 
 146,185 
 And at Havana in 1837, . . . 442 
 
 I cannot find that any have been adjudi- 
 cated at Rio. 
 
 Further than this I cannot go by actual 
 proof; but there can be no doubt that the 
 Slave Trade has other victims than those in- 
 cluded in this table. For example, we know 
 that several slave vessels are annually wreck- 
 ed or founder at sea ;* though it is impossible 
 to arrive at anything like exact numbers. 
 Many negroes also are thrown overboard, 
 either during a chase, or from dearth of pro- 
 visions and water. f 
 
 For these I will assume, . . . 3,373 
 
 Total, 150,000 
 I have no authority for this assumption of 3,373 ; 
 it is merely a guess ; it may be excessive. I only take 
 this number to make a round sum. And if in this tri- 
 vial point T have gone beyond the mark, I shall give 
 abundant compensation for it hereafter. 
 I will next take the case of the island of 
 
 Porto Rico. y 
 
 In regard to Porto Rico, I learn, from the valuable 
 
 * See Wrecks, &c. , page 139, &c. 
 
 | See p. 130, Captain Wauchope, R. N. See also the Paris 
 Petition, at p. 118. 
 
 3 
 
26 THE SLAVE TRADE, 
 
 work of Colonel Flinter, entitled ■ Present State of the 
 Island of Porto Rico,' some important facts ; the exports 
 from that island were : 
 
 Jn 1814 . . . 500,840 dollars. 
 1830 . . . 3,411,845 
 
 The amount of sugar produced has increased 
 from 37,969 arrobas in 1810 
 to 414,663 « 1830 
 
 He calculates that there are only 45,000 slaves in the 
 island; but he tells us that the landed proprietors con- 
 ceal the real number of their slaves in order to escape 
 a tax. 
 
 From the Parliamentary Papers of 1837, it appears, 
 as stated by Mr. Courtenay, the British Consul at Port- 
 au-Prince, Haiti, "that a slaving schooner, under the 
 Brazilian flag, called Pacquette de Capo Verde, was 
 wrecked on the Folle reefs near Aux Cayes, on the 
 28th February, 1837, having previously landed his 
 cargo at Ponce, in the island of Porto Rico."* It ap- 
 pears, also, that one-ninth part of all the vessels- con- 
 demned at Sierra Leone in 1837 were bound for Porto 
 Rico, and that one of them, at least, the Descubierta, 
 belonged to the island, and was built there. f 
 
 In a Report by the Commissioners at Sierra Leone, 
 of date 20th March, 1837, it is stated that the Temera- 
 rio had been captured with 352 slaves on board, bound 
 for the island of Porto Rico;:}: the Commissioners, on 
 the 25th of April following, report the case of the Cinco 
 Amigos, " belonging to the Spanish island of Porto 
 Rico, where slaving adventurers have latterly been fitted 
 out with increasing activity. "§ 
 
 A gentleman, on whom I can rely, has informed me 
 that in November, 1836, he saw two slave vessels fit- 
 ting out in the harbor of Porto Rico, and on his return 
 
 * Class B, 1837, p. 140, 
 
 f Class A, (Farther Series,) 1837, pp. 5, 13. 
 
 4 Class A, 1837, p. 50. § Class A, 1837, p. 28. 
 
EXTENT BUENOS AYRES. 27 
 
 in March, 1837, he saw a slaver entering the harbor, 
 and he learned on the spot from good authority, that 
 about 7000 negroes had been landed in the space of the 
 preceding year. 
 
 From the above facts, especially from the increased 
 production of sugar ; from the constant smuggling 
 communication which is known to exist with the slave- 
 mart of St. Thomas ; from the circumstance that ap- 
 prentices have been kidnapped by their masters in the 
 British settlement of Anguilla,*' for the purpose of 
 being carried to Porto Rico, — and from the fact, that 
 there is some Slave Trade with that island, it is not 
 difficult to come to the conclusion, that there has been 
 a traffic in slaves to a considerable amount. Upon the 
 same principle, however, which has led me to wave all 
 additions to which any shade of doubt may attach, I 
 will not claim any increase on the sum of slaves ex- 
 ported from Africa in respect of Porto Rico. 
 
 Buenos Ayres, etc. 
 
 I am afraid that some addition might too justly be 
 claimed with regard to Buenos Ayres, Rio de la Plata, 
 and the United Provinces of the Uruguay. 
 
 In a letter from Mr. Hood to Lord Palmerston, dated 
 from Buenos Ayres, 1833, it is stated, "that the dor- 
 mant spirit of Slave Trading has been awakened ;" that 
 " the Aguila Primera, a schooner belonging to this 
 place, and under this flag, was fitting, and in a forward 
 state, to proceed to the coast of Congo, for a cargo of 
 slaves ; and that other fast-sailing vessels were in re- 
 quest for the same service." The Uruguese minister 
 did not deny that the Government were cognisant of 
 the proceedings, and confessed that " they had given 
 their concurrence to import 2000 colonists from the 
 coast of Africa, which he considered a fair and legiti- 
 mate trade." Nor is it to be wondered at, that he had 
 
 * Class B, 1837, p. 10. 
 
28 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 arrived at so extraordinary a conclusion ; for it appears 
 by the same letter that the same " minister had received 
 a bribe of 30,000 dollars to permit a company of mer- 
 chants to import 2000 slaves, under the denomination 
 of colonists."* 
 
 In September, 1834, Lord Palmerston, in a letter to 
 Mr. Hamilton, states, that " the Slave Trade is now in- 
 creasing in the river Plata, supported by the capital of 
 Monte Video citizens, and covered by the flag of the 
 United Provinces of the Uruguay," and that the Aboli- 
 tion law is wholly without effect, f 
 
 How unavailing were the remonstrances then made, 
 appears by the fact of the seizure, on the 10th Novem- 
 ber, 1834, of the Rio da Prata, a slave brig of 202 
 tons, under the flag of Monte Video, with license from 
 the authorities to import 650 colonists, with 521 slaves 
 on board, men, women and children.":}: 
 
 " We may form some idea," says Mr. M'Queen, 
 " of the numbers imported into the Argentine Republic, 
 from the fact that, in 1835, (see Porter's Tables,) 
 twenty Portuguese vessels departed for Africa, and as 
 many arrived from it in the port of Monte Video, after 
 landing their cargoes of slaves from Africa on the adja- 
 cent coasts." 
 
 It is most disheartening to find, that, in spite of all 
 our efforts, the Slave Trade, instead of ceasing where it 
 has long prevailed, is spreading over these new and 
 petty states ; and that the first use they make of their 
 flag, (which but for us they never would have possessed,) 
 is to thwart Great Britain, and to cover the Slave 
 Trade ; and, farther, to learn that their slave-traffic is 
 attended with even more than the usual horrors. It 
 must not be forgotten that, as we have just seen, for a 
 voyage from the southern coast of Africa to Monte 
 Video, (a voyage of some thousands of miles,) the space 
 allowed is less than one ton for three slaves. 
 
 + Class B, 1833, pp. 55 and 56. f Class B, 1834, p. 81. 
 
 * Class B, 1835, p. 141. 
 
EXTENT UNITED STATES. 29 
 
 Lists are given in the Parliamentary Papers of many 
 vessels employed in the Slave Trade, which are con- 
 tinually arriving at, or sailing from Monte Video ;* but 
 it seems hardly necessary to pursue the subject further. 
 We know there is a Slave Trade with these states ; but 
 as we have no data to compute the extent of it, I cannot 
 avail myself of the fact, however certain it may be. 
 I must, therefore, in regard to these countries, as I have 
 done in the case of Porto Rico, wave extending my cal- 
 culations. I will next advert to 
 
 The United States. 
 
 In the Report of the Commissioners at Havana, for 
 1836, dated 25th October, 1836, I find these words :— 
 " During the months of August and September, (1836,) 
 there arrived here for sale, from the United States, se- 
 veral new schooners, some of which were already ex- 
 pressly fitted for the Slave Trade. 
 
 " The Emanuel and Dolores were purchased, and 
 have since left the port (we believe with other names) 
 on slaving expeditions, under the Spanish flag." 
 
 " But to our astonishment and regret, we have as- 
 certained that the Anaconda and Viper, the one on the 
 6th, and the other on the 10th, current, cleared out, 
 and sailed from hence for the Cape de Verde Islands, 
 under the American flag. 
 
 " These two vessels arrived in the Havana, fitted 
 in every particular for the Slave Trade ; and took on 
 board a cargo which would at once have condemned, 
 as a slaver, any vessel belonging to the nations that 
 are parties to the equipment article. "t 
 
 The Commissioners farther observe, that the decla- 
 ration of the American President " not to make the 
 United States a party to any convention on the subject 
 of the Slave Trade, has been the means of inducing 
 American citizens to build and fit, in their own ports, 
 
 * Class B, 1835, pp. 141—143. f Class A, 1836, p, 191. 
 3* 
 
30 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 vessels only calculated for piracy or the Slave Trade, 
 to enter this harbor, and, in concert with the Havana 
 slave-traders, to take on board a prohibited cargo, 
 manacles, &c. ; and proceed openly to that notorious 
 depot for this iniquitous traffic, the Cape de Verde 
 Islands, under the shelter of their national flag :" and, 
 we may add, that, while these American slavers were 
 making their final arrangements for departure, the Ha- 
 vana was visited more than once by American ships of 
 war, as well as British and French." 
 
 The Commissioners also state, that " two American 
 vessels, the Fanny Butler and Rosanna, have proceeded 
 to the Cape de Verde Islands and the coast of Africa, un- 
 der the American flag, upon the same inhuman specula- 
 tion."* A few months afterwards they report that — 
 " We cannot conceal our deep regret at the new and 
 dreadful impetus imparted to the Slave Trade of this 
 island (Cuba) by the manner in which some American 
 citizens impunibly violate every law, by embarking 
 openly for the coast of Africa under their national flag, 
 with the avowed purpose of bringing slaves to this 
 market. t We are likewise assured that it is intended, 
 by means of this flag, to supply slaves for the vast pro- 
 vince of Texas ; agents from thence being in constant 
 communication with the Havana Slave Merchants.":}: 
 
 This " new and dreadful impetus" to the Slave 
 Trade, predicted by our commissioners, has already 
 come to pass. In a list of the departure of vessels for 
 
 * Class A, 1836, pp. 191. 192. 
 
 f Class A, 1836, p. 218, and Class B, 1836, pp. 123, and 129. 
 
 t While preparing this work for the press, I received a commu- 
 nication from Major M'Gregor, late Special Magistrate at the 
 Bahamas, in which he notices the wreck of the schooner Invincible, 
 on the 28th October, 1837, on one of these islands; and he adds, 
 "the captain's name was Potts, a native of Florida. The vessel 
 was fitted out at Baltimore, in America, and three-fourths of the 
 crew were natives of the United States, although they pretended 
 to be only passengers . 
 
EXTENT TEXAS. 31 
 
 the coast of Africa, from the Havana, up to a recent 
 date, I find that, " in the last four months," no other 
 flags than those of Portugal and the United States have 
 been used to cover slavers.* 
 
 The list states that vessels, fitted for the Slave Trade, 
 sailed from Havana for the coast of Africa, bearing the 
 American flag, as follows : — 
 
 American 
 
 During the month of June, 1838, 2 
 
 July, 2 
 
 " August 5 
 
 " September 1 
 
 10 
 
 No symptom in the case is so alarming as this. It 
 remains to be seen, whether America will endure that 
 her flag shall be the refuge of these dealers in human 
 blood. 
 
 I confidently hope better things for the peace of Af- 
 rica and for the honor of the United States. 
 
 This leads me to the province of 
 
 Texas. 
 
 I have been informed, upon high authority, that 
 " within the last twelve months"]" 15,000 negroes were 
 imported from Africa into Texas." I have the greatest 
 reliance on the veracity of the gentleman from whom 
 this intelligence comes ; but I would fain hope that he 
 
 * The Venus, said to be the sharpest clipper built vessel ever 
 constructed at Baltimore, left that plaoe in July, 1838, and arrived 
 at Havana on the 4th of August following. She sailed from thence, 
 in September, for Mozambique ; there she took in a cargo of slaves, 
 being all this time under the flag of the United States. On the 7th 
 January, 1839, she landed 860 negroes near Havana, under Por- 
 tuguese colors; and on the 9th these blacks, with 1200 more, were 
 seen at one of the Barracoons, within two miles of that city, " ex- 
 posed for sale, and presenting a most humiliating and melancholy 
 spectacle." — Private Letters. 
 
 f Referring to 1837 and 1838. 
 
32 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 is in error. I can conceive no calamity to Africa 
 greater than that Texas should be added to the number 
 of the slave-trading states. It is a gulf which will ab- 
 sorb millions of the human race. I have proof quite 
 independent of any statements in this work, that not less 
 than four millions of negroes have in the last half cen- 
 tury been torn from Africa for the supply of Brazil. 
 Texas, once polluted with the Slave Trade, will require 
 a number still more appalling. 
 
 In the case of Texas, as 1 have not sufficient proof to 
 adduce in support of the numbers which it is reported 
 have been carried into that country, I shall, as I have 
 already done in similar instances, wave my claim for 
 increasing my general estimate. 
 
 Summary. 
 
 I have, then, brought the case to this point. There 
 is Slave Trading, although to an unknown and indefi- 
 nite amount, into Porto Rico ; into Texas ; and into 
 some of the South American Republics. 
 
 There is the strongest presumptive evidence, that the 
 Slave Trade into the five ports of Brazil which have 
 been noticed, is " much more considerable" than my 
 estimate makes it ; and that I have also underrated the 
 importation of negroes into Cuba. There are even 
 grounds for suspicion that there are other places (be- 
 sides Porto Rico, Texas, Cuba, Monte Video, &c, and 
 Brazil,) where slaves are introduced ; but for all these 
 presumptions 1 reckon nothing, I take no account of 
 them ; I limit myself to the facts which I have esta- 
 blished, viz., that there are, at the present time, im- 
 ported annually into Brazil . . . 78,333 
 That the annual importations into Cuba amount to 60,000 
 That there have been captured . . 8,294 
 And I assume that the casualties amount to 3,373 
 
 Making together 150,000 
 
CORROBORATIVE PROOFS, ETC. 33 
 
 Corroborative Proofs of the Extent of the 
 Slave Trade. 
 
 I confess there is something startling in the assertion 
 that so vast a number are annually carried from Africa 
 to various parts of the New World. 
 
 Such a statement may well be received with some 
 degree of doubt, and even suspicion. I have not been 
 wholly free from these feelings myself, and I have again 
 and again gone over the public dozuments, on which I 
 have alone relied, in order to detect any inaccuracy 
 which might lurk in them, or in the inferences deduced 
 from them. No such mistake can I discover; but my 
 conviction that the calculation is not excessive, has 
 been fortified by finding that other persons, who have 
 had access to other sources of information, and who rest 
 their estimates on other data than those on which I have 
 relied, make the number of human beings torn from 
 Africa, still greater than I do. 
 
 For example : — Captain M'Lean, Governor of Cape 
 Coast Castle for many years, who estimates the extent 
 of the Slave Trade by the vessels which he has seen 
 passing along the coast, rates the number of slaves an- 
 nually taken from the Bights of Benin and Biafra alone 
 at 140,000. 
 
 In a letter from that gentleman dated June 11, 1833, 
 he says : — 
 
 Sir, — In compliance with your wishes, I beg leave to state to 
 you, in this form, what I have already mentioned to you verbally ; 
 namely, that "in the year 1834, I have every reason to believe 
 that the number of .Slaves carried off from the Bights of Benin 
 and Biafra amounted to 140,000. I have not beside me the 
 particular data whereon I grounded this calculation; but I can 
 state generally, that I founded it upon the number of slave-vessels 
 which actually passed the forts on the Gold Coast during that 
 year, and of those others, of whose presence on the coast I had 
 certain information from her Majesty's cruisers or otherwise. 
 When I say that I have rather under than over-stated the number, 
 I ought at the same time to state that, in the years 1834-5, more 
 slavers appeared on the coast than on any previous year within my 
 
34 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 observation; and this was partially, at least, accounted for (by 
 those engaged in the traffic) by the fact of the cholera having 
 swept off a large number of the slaves in the Island of Cuba. The 
 Ports of Bahia, also, were opened for the introduction of slaves, 
 after having been shut for some time previous, on account of an in- 
 surrection among the negro population in that country. 
 
 This does not include the slaves embarked from the 
 many notorious slave-ports to the northward of Cape 
 Coast, nor those carried from the eastern shores of 
 Africa, nor those who are shipped at Loango, and the 
 rest of the south-western coast. I confess that I have 
 not any very clear grounds for calculating or estimating 
 the number shipped from these three quarters. Along 
 the south-eastern coast, we know that there are a great 
 many ports from whence slaves are taken. With re- 
 spect to the majority of these, we are left in the dark, 
 as to the extent to which the Slave Trade is carried on; 
 but in a few cases we have specific information. For 
 example : — in the letters found on board the Soleil, 
 which was captured by Commodore Owen, H. M. S. 
 Leven, we have the following statement : — " From the 
 port of Mozambique are exported every year upwards 
 of 10,000 blacks."* Commodore Owen, in the account 
 of his voyage to the eastern coast, informs us, that from 
 eleven to fourteen slave-vessels come annually from 
 Rio Janeiro to Quilimane, and return with from 400 to 
 500 slaves each, on an average, which would amount 
 to about 5500.f 
 
 Captain Cook^: has informed me that, during the 
 year 1837, 21 slave vessels sailed from Mozambique, 
 with an average cargo of 400 slaves each, making 
 8400. These, added to 7200 exported from Quilimane 
 in eighteen vessels, also in 1837, according to Captain 
 Cook, give a total of 15,600 slaves conveyed to Brazil 
 
 * Class B, 1828, p. 84. 
 
 ■j- Owen's Voyage, &c, London, 1833, vol. i., p. 293. 
 t Captain Cook commanded a trading vessel, employed on the 
 east coast of Africa, in 1836, 7, and 8. 
 
CORROBORATIVE PROOFS, ETC. 35 
 
 and Cuba from these two ports alone. Of all the ves- 
 sels, in number about thirty-eight, which jailed from 
 the eastern coast in that year, Captain Cook believes 
 that only one was captured. He adds, — " Some slaves 
 are shipped from Inhambane, and other places along 
 the coast;" but having no accurate information, he has 
 altogether omitted them. 
 
 Lieutenant Bosanquet, of H. M. S. Leveret, in a let- 
 ter addressed to Admiral Sir P. Campbell, dated 29th 
 September, 1837, says : — " From my observations last 
 year, and from the information I have since been able 
 to obtain, I conceive that upwards of 12,000 slaves 
 must have left the east coast of Africa in 1836, for 
 the Erazils and Cuba ; and I think, from the number 
 of vessels already arrived,* and there being many more 
 expected, that that number will not be much decreased 
 this year."f 
 
 We now turn to the south-western coast : — 
 
 In 1826 the Governor of Benguela informed Com- 
 modore Owen, that " Some years back that place had 
 enjoyed greater trade than St. Paul de Loando, having 
 then an annual averaged export of 20,000 slaves."! 
 Owen also informs us that " From St. Paul de Loando 
 18,000 to 20,000 slaves are said to be annually export- 
 ed, in great part to Brazil ; but that the supply had 
 considerably decreased on account of the dishonesty of 
 the black agents in the country." 
 
 Commodore Owen shortly afterwards (in 1827) vi- 
 sited Kassenda, near the river Congo, which place, he 
 says, " is principally resorted to by slavers, of whom 
 five were at anchor, in the harbor, on our arrival, one 
 French, and the rest under the Brazilian flag."§ 
 
 On looking over the Slave Trade papers presented 
 
 * The letter is dated at the close of the rainy season on the 
 eastern coast. 
 
 f Class B, Farther Series, 1837, p. 25. 
 
 t Owen's Voyage, &c, vol. ii., p. 272. § Ditto, p. 292. 
 
lib THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 to Parliament in 1838,* I find it stated in monthly 
 lists, that in the course of the year 1837 seventy ves- 
 sels were reported by the British authorities to have 
 imported into the vicinity of Rio Janeiro 29,929 slaves, 
 from Angola, Benguela, and Loando. All these vessels 
 came in ballast to the port of Rio Janeiro, after having 
 landed their slaves on the coast. 
 
 The reader will see, vide pp. 15, 16, that there are 
 other points in Brazil at which slaves are disembarked. 
 To say nothing of these, though the consul at one of 
 them reports the arrival of the Portuguese brig Aleide, 
 from Angola, on the 10th July, 1837, having previously 
 landed 460 slaves in the neighborhood ; though the 
 consul at another states that " the frequent disembarka- 
 tion of negroes imported from the. Coast of Africa in 
 the vicinities of this port, is the common public talk of 
 the day ; and though the vice consul at a third, notices 
 the arrival of three vessels from Angola in the months 
 of November and December, 1836, I only claim from 
 Angola 29,929 negroes landed in Brazil in 1837. 
 
 Then, as to the ports and rivers to the north of Cape 
 Palmas, I find that General Turner, late Governor of 
 Sierra Leone, in a despatch dated the 20th December, 
 1825, states that the exports of slaves from that part of 
 the coast amounts annually to 30,000. f 
 
 From these extracts it appears that we have satis- 
 factory evidence that the exports of slaves from the 
 south-eastern coast of Africa to America amounts an- 
 nually to, say, .... 15,000 
 From Angola, &c, to America, . . 29,929 
 From the ports to the northward of Cape 
 
 Coast to America, . . . 30,000 
 
 Amounting in all to . 74,929 
 
 Thus then stands the case. We have information 
 
 * Class B, 1837, and Class B, Farther Series, 1837. 
 
 | Extracted from the Records of the Colonial Office for 1825. 
 
CORROBORATIVE PROOFS, ETC. 37 
 
 that the Slave Trade prevails in a variety of ports and 
 rivers besides those in the Bights of Benin and Biafra. 
 This information, though conclusive as to the fact that 
 the Slave Trade prevails, is vague as to the extent to 
 which it is carried on ; but we have specific authority 
 to this extent that from a limited number of these ports 
 there is an annual draft of about . . 75,000 
 
 To these we must confine ourselves, and these 
 
 added to . . . . 140,000 
 
 given by Mr. M'Lean for the export from 
 the Bights of Benin and Biafra, make the 
 
 total annual Slave Trade between Africa 
 
 and America amount to . . 215,000 
 
 If we deduct from this number the usual amount of 
 
 mortality, it will leave a remainder not very different 
 
 from, though somewhat exceeding, the estimate of 
 
 150,000 landed annually in America. 
 
 With another gentleman, Mr. M'Queen, whose au- 
 thority I have already quoted, I did not become ac- 
 quainted till after the time that I had completed my 
 own estimate. His channels of information are totally 
 distinct from mine. Besides being conversant with all 
 the information which is to be found in this country, 
 he has recently returned from a visit to Brazil, Cuba, 
 and Porto Rico, where he went on the business of the 
 Colonial Bank, and where he availed himself of oppor- 
 tunities of collecting information relative to the Slave 
 Trade. 
 
 He rates the Slave Trade of Brazil at 90,000 
 
 Cuba and Porto Rico, . . 100,000 
 
 Captured in the year 1837, . 6,146 
 
 196,146 
 
 Besides Texas, Buenos Ayres, and the Argentine Re- 
 public, into which he believes there are large importa- 
 tions, though to what extent he has no means of judging. 
 I now resort to a mode of proof totally different from 
 all the foregoing. I have had much communication 
 4 
 
38 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 with African merchants engaged in legitimate trade ; 
 and it was suggested by one of them that a very fair 
 estimate of numbers might be formed, from the amount 
 of goods prepared for the Slave Trade, (and absolutely 
 inapplicable to any other purpose than the Slave Trade,) 
 manufactured in this country. At my request, they 
 furnished me with the following very intelligent sum- 
 mary of the argument, prepared, as I understood, by 
 Captain M'Lean: 
 
 It is necessarily impossible, from the very nature of the Slave 
 Trade, to ascertain directly, or with any degree of precision, the 
 number of slaves actually exported from the coast of Africa for 
 the Transatlantic slave-markets, in any given year or space of time. 
 But it is very possible, by instituting careful and minute inquiries 
 into the several ramifications into which that traffic branches, to 
 obtain results, by the combination of which we may arrive at an 
 approximation to the truth, sufficiently accurate for all the purposes 
 of the main inquiry. And if we find that the data, thus obtained 
 from the most opposite sources, and from parties upon whose judg- 
 ment and veracity the most implicit reliance may be placed, bring 
 us to the same general result, it may, we think, be fairly taken for 
 granted, that that result is substantially correct. 
 
 Among the various sources to which we have applied ourselves, 
 in order to ascertain the present actual extent of the Slave Trade, 
 not the least important or satisfactory in its results has been a 
 careful inquiry as to the quantity and value of goods manufactured 
 expressly and exclusively for the purchase of slaves. The grounds 
 upon which we instituted and carried on this investigation were 
 these : — 
 
 1. We ascertained, by the concurrent testimony of competent 
 and unimpeachable authority, that the merchandise chiefly, if not 
 exclusively, given in exchange for slaves, consisted of cowries, Bra- 
 zilian tobacco in rolls, spirits, and Manchester piece-goods. 
 
 2. That the proportions of the goods thus paid might be taken 
 generally to be, — one-third cowries, a third tobacco and spirits, and 
 a third Manchester cotton goods. 
 
 3. We ascertained that the average sum paid for each slave, 
 (taking the goods at cost prices,) was about £4 sterling. 
 
 Lastly, we ascertained that all, or neariy all, the cotton goods 
 purchased for the Slave Trade, were manufactured in Lancashire ; 
 and that the description of goods so manufactured were altogether 
 unsuitable for any other market, save that traffic alone. 
 
 Assuming these premises to be correct, and we verified them 
 
CORROBORATIVE PROOFS, ETC. 39 
 
 with much care, and by the most strict investigation, it of course 
 followed that, if by any means, we could ascertain, even proxi- 
 mately, the value and quantity of the cotton goods manufactured 
 in, and exported from Lancashire, for the Slave Trade, during any 
 one of the last few years, we should arrive at a proximate (but, in 
 the main, correct) estimate of the number of slaves actually pur- 
 chased on the coast of Africa. 
 
 To some, this indirect modus proband', as to an important fact, 
 may appear far-fetched ; but we are assured by those who are most 
 conversant with the African trade generally, as well as with the 
 Slave Trade and its operations in particular, that it is much more 
 conclusive than, to those unacquainted with that peculiar trade, it 
 would appear. As corroborative of other proofs, at least, it must 
 certainly be regarded as very valuable. 
 
 From returns with which we have been furnished by parties 
 whose names, were we at liberty to mention them, would be a 
 sufficient guarantee for their correctness, we have ascertained that 
 the entire quantity of cotton goods manufactured in Lancashire, 
 for the African trade (including the legitimate, as well as the Slave 
 Trade,) was, in the year 1836, as follows: — 
 
 Value of Manchester goods manufactured exclusively 
 
 for the African legitimate trade, . . . £150,000 
 
 Value of goods manufactured in Lancashire, and 
 shipped to Brazil, Cuba, United States, and else- 
 where, intended for the Slave Trade, and adapted 
 only for that trade, . . . £250,000 
 
 Thus showing an excess in the quantity of goods manufactured for 
 the Slave Trade, over that intended for legitimate trade, during the 
 year 1836, of £100,000, or two-fifths of the whole amount. 
 
 Calculating by the data already given, we shall find that the 
 number of slaves to the purchase of which the above amount 
 of goods (manufactured and exported in one year, 1836) was ade- 
 quate, would amount to the large number of 187,500, — a number 
 which we have strong reason to believe, according to information 
 derived from other sources, to be substantially correct. 
 
 Assuming the data on which the merchants calculate 
 to be correct, some considerable addition must be made 
 to the number of 187,500. 
 
 1 . Goods only suited to the Slave Trade are manu- 
 factured at Glasgow as well as in Lancashire. 
 
 2. Specie, to a very considerable extent, finds its way 
 through Cuba and Brazil to Africa, and is there employ- 
 ed in the purchase of slaves. To the number then pur- 
 
40 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 chased by goods must be added the number purchased 
 by money. 
 
 3. Amunition and fire arms to a large amount, and, 
 like the goods, of a quality only fit for the Slave Trade, 
 are sent from this country to Africa. The annual 
 amount of such exports is stated in the Official Tables,* 
 No. 6, of 1836, to be 137,698/. This item alone would 
 give an increase of 34,174. 
 
 4. The Americans also furnish Cuba and Brazil with 
 arms, ammunition, and goods. 
 
 5. East Indian goods also are employed in the Slave 
 Trade. 
 
 It is superfluous to quote authority for the facts just 
 enumerated, as they are notorious to commercial men. 
 Thus, by the aid of this circumstantial evidence, of 
 scarcely inferior value to direct and immediate proof, 
 we show that the Slave Trade between Africa and the 
 West cannot be less than 200,000, and probably reaches 
 250,000, annually imported. 
 
 There is also another mode of looking at the same 
 question, though under an aspect quite distinct. 
 
 From an examination of the number of slave ships 
 which left Brazil, Cuba, &c, in the year 1829,f as 
 compared with the number captured in the same year, 
 it appears that on the average, one in thirty, only, is 
 taken; now, on the average of the years 1836 and 
 1837, we have 7,538 negroes as the number captured, 
 which being multiplied by 30, gives a total, 226,140. 
 
 Thus, then, the estimate of 150,000 at which, on the 
 authority, principally, of the British Commissioners, I 
 have myself arrived, wilh the number which perish on 
 the passage,^: make together an amount which corres- 
 ponds with, and is confirmed, 
 
 * Tables of revenue, &c. published by authority of Parliament. 
 | Mr. M'Queen communicated this to me, last year. 
 i See Summary — Mortality, Middle Passage. 
 
MOHAMMEDAN' SLAVE TRADE. 41 
 
 1st, by the actual observation of the Governor 
 
 of Cape Coast Castle, coupled with other 
 
 authorities, by which the number must 
 
 amount to ... 200,000 
 
 2dly, by Mr. M'Queen's researches, by which 
 
 the number must amount to . 196,000 
 
 3dly, by the estimates founded on the quan- 
 tity of goods exported for the Slave Trade, 
 by which it must amount to from 200,000 to 250,000 
 4thly, by a comparison between the proportion 
 captured with those who escape, by which 
 it must amount to . . . 226,000 
 
 I have now to consider the 
 
 Mohammedan Slave Trade. 
 Hitherto, I have confined my observations to the 
 traffic across the Atlantic, from the east and west coasts 
 of Africa; there is yet another drain upon this unhappy 
 country, in the immense trade which is carried on for 
 the supply of the Mohammedan markets of Morocco, 
 Tunis, Tripoli, Egypt, Turkey, Persia, Arabia, and the 
 borders of Asia. 
 
 This commerce comprises two distinct divisions, 1st, 
 the maritime, the victims of which are shipped from 
 the north-east coast, in Arab vessels ; and 2nd, the De- 
 sert, which is carried on, by means of caravans, to 
 Barbary, Egypt, &c. 
 
 The maritime trade is principally conducted by the 
 subjects of the Imaum of Muskat ; and this is a branch 
 of our subject, heretofore but little known, I will make a 
 few remarks as to its extent, the countries which it sup- 
 plies, and the amount of its annual export. 
 
 Captain Cogan, of the Indian Navy, who, from his 
 frequent intercourse with the Imaum, and from having 
 been his accredited agent in England, had the best 
 opportunities of becoming acquainted with this Prince 
 and his subjects, has informed me that the Imaum's 
 African dominions extend from Cape Delgado, about 
 10° S. Lat., to the Rio dos Fuegos, under the Line; 
 4* 
 
42 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 and that formerly this coast was notorious, for its traffic 
 in slaves, with Christians as well as Mohammedans; the 
 River Lindy, and the Island of Zanzebar, being the prin- 
 cipal marts for the supply of the Christian market. 
 
 In 1822, a treaty was concluded by Captain Moresby, 
 R. N., on behalf of the British Government, witht he 
 Imaum, by which the trade with Christian countries 
 was declared abolished for ever throughout his domi- 
 nions and dependencies ; but this arrangement, it must 
 be remembered, does not in any way touch upon the 
 Slave Trade carried on by the Imaum's subjects, with 
 those of their own faith. 
 
 By means of this reserved trade, slaves are exported 
 to Zanzebar ; to the ports on both sides of the Arabian 
 Gulf; to the markets of Egypt, Cairo, and Alexandria; 
 to the south part of Arabia ; to both sides of the Persian 
 Gulf; to the north-west coasts of India ; to the island of 
 Java, and to most of the Eastern islands. The vessels 
 which convey these negroes are in general the property 
 of Arabs, or other Mohammedan traders. 
 
 Both Sir Alexander Johnston, who was long resident 
 at Ceylon in a judicial situation, and Captain Cogan, 
 have heard the number, thus exported, reckoned at 
 50,000 per annum ; but Captain Cogan admits 20,000 to 
 be the number legally exported from Africa, upon which 
 the Imaum derives a revenue of so much per head ; and 
 he also admits that there is, besides, an illicit trade, by 
 which 10,000 more may be smuggled every year. 
 
 All travellers, who have recently visited the chief 
 seats of this traffic, agree in describing it as very con- 
 siderable. 
 
 " At Muskat," says Lieutenant Wellsted,* " about 
 4000 slaves, of both sexes, and all ages, are disposed of 
 annually." 
 
 Captain Cook, (to whom I have already referred,) 
 who returned, in 1838, from a trading voyage to the 
 
 * Wellsted's Travels in Arabia, &c, vol. i., p. 388. 
 
MOHAMMEDAN SLAVE TRADE. 43 
 
 eastern coast of Africa, informs me that he was at Zan- 
 zebar at several different periods, and that he always 
 " found the slave-market, held there daily, fully sup- 
 plied. He could not ascertain the number annually 
 sold, but slaves were constantly arriving in droves, of 
 from 50 to 100 each, and found a ready sale ; they 
 were chiefly," he understood, " purchased by Arab 
 merchants, for the supply of Egypt, Abyssinia, Arabia, 
 and the ports along the Arabian Gulf, to the markets 
 of which countries hundreds were carried off and sold 
 daily." 
 
 Many, however, are kept in Zanzebar, where there 
 are sugar and spice plantations, and where, according to 
 Ruschenberger,* the population amounts to 150,000, of 
 which about two-thirds are slaves. 
 
 I also find, from Lieutenant Wellsted,t that there is 
 a Slave Trade carried on with the opposite coast of 
 Arabia by the Somaulys, who inhabit the coast of Ber- 
 bera, between Cape Guardafui and the Straits of Babel 
 Mandel. 
 
 I am therefore warranted in taking Captain Cogan's 
 estimate, viz., 30,000 per annum, as the number of ne- 
 groes annually drained off by the Mohammedan Slave 
 Trade from the east coast of Africa. J 
 
 * Ruschenberger's Voyage, 1835, 6, 7, vol. i., p. 40. 
 
 j Wellsted's Travels in Arabia, &c, vol. ii., p. 363. 
 
 \ There seems also to be an export of slaves from the Portu- 
 guese settlements on the east coast of Africa, to their possessions 
 in Hindustan, which, as appears from the accounts of travellers, 
 commenced towards the close of the seventeenth century, and 
 has continued to the present time. In a despatch to the Court of 
 Directors from the Bombay Government, dated 12th May, 1838, 
 Mr. Erskine, resident at Kattywar, (in the province of Guzerat,) 
 states, that " a considerable importation of slaves takes place at 
 Dieu, both directly from the Arabian Gulf, and from Goa, and 
 Dumaun, from whence they are brought into the province. For 
 this I may confidently say, I see no remedy whatever, as it rests 
 entirely with the British Government to say how far they consider 
 it politic to interfere with their allies, the Portuguese, on this im- 
 portant question." 
 
44 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 I now come to the other division, that of the Desert, 
 or caravan Slave Trade ; and here I shall briefly 
 notice the countries which furnish its victims, so that 
 we may see how vast a region lies under its withering 
 influence. 
 
 By the laws of the Koran, no Mohammedan is al- 
 lowed to enslave one of his own faith. The powerful 
 Negro Moslem kingdoms, south of the desert, are thus, 
 in a great measure, freed from the evils of this com- 
 merce ; and countries from which it is supplied are 
 almost entirely Pagan, or only partially Mohammedan, 
 and comprehend, in addition to the Pagan tribes (chiefly 
 Tibboos) which are scattered over parts of the Desert, 
 and lie intermixed among the Moslem kingdoms, all 
 the northern part of Pagan Negroland, reaching, in a 
 continuous line, from the banks of the Senegal to the 
 mountains of Abyssinia and the sources of the Nile. 
 The negro Mohammedans, though not themselves suf- 
 ferers from this Slave Trade, are active agents in car- 
 rying it on. 
 
 The Mohammedan towns of Jenne, Timbuctoo ; 
 Kano and Sackatoo, in Houssa ; Rouka and Angornou, 
 in Bornou ; Wawa, or Ware, the capital of Waday ; 
 and Cobbe, the capital of Darfour, — are so many large 
 warehouses, where the stores of human merchandise 
 are kept for the supply of the Arab carriers or traders, 
 who convey them in caravans across the Desert. The 
 Soudan* negroes, so conveyed, and by many different 
 routes,f are not only intended for the supply of Bar- 
 bary and Egypt, and the banks of the Nile, from its 
 mouth to the southern frontiers of Abyssinia, but, as I 
 have learnt from a variety of authorities, they are ex- 
 
 * The term " Soudan" is chiefly applied to the countries lying to 
 the south of the Saharra or Great Desert. 
 
 ■\ The great posts on the northern side of the Desert, where the 
 traders collect, appear to be Wednoon,Tafilet, Fez, and Ghadanies; 
 Mourzouk, the capital of Fezzan ; and Siout and Shendy, on the 
 Nile. 
 
MOHAMMED AX SLAVE TRADE. 45 
 
 ported to Turkey, Arabia, Syria, Persia, and Bok- 
 hara.* 
 
 With regard to the Dumber thus annually exported, 
 the absence of official documents, the imperfect evidence 
 afforded by the statements of African travellers, and 
 the immense extent of the subject itself, in its geogra- 
 phical relations, render it extremely difficult to obtain 
 anything approaching to a correct estimate. 
 
 For these reasons, and as I have no wish to go be- 
 yond the bounds of producible proofs, I shall not esti- 
 mate the Mohammedan Slave Trade at a greater extent 
 than that which I am fairly entitled to assume, from 
 the observations of African travellers. 
 
 Jackson, in his Travels in Africa,! speaks of a cara- 
 van from Timbuctoo to Tafllet, in 1805, consisting of 
 "2000 persons, and 1800 camels." 
 
 Riley tells us,i that the Moor, Sidi Hamet, informed 
 him, that in one yearly caravan with which he travelled 
 (1807) from Timbuctoo to Morrocco, there were 2000 
 slaves. 
 
 Captain Lyon§ gives 5000 or 5500, as the annual 
 import into Fezzan ; and Ritchie, || who travelled with 
 him, says, that in 1819, 5000 slaves arrived at Mour- 
 zouk from Soudan. 
 
 Ritter,H in his observations on the Slave Trade, tells 
 us, that the Darfour Caravans, arrive yearly at Cairo, 
 from the interior, varying in their numbers according 
 to time and circumstances ; the smaller caravans, con- 
 sisting of from 5000 to 6000, (according to Browne,** 
 
 * The Hon. Mountstuart Elphinstone, in his account of Caubul, 
 (London, 1839, vol. i., p. 318,) says, " there are slaves in Afghan- 
 istan : Abyssinians and Negroes are sometimes brought from 
 Arabia." 
 
 f Jackson's Travels, 1809, p. 239. ± Riley's Narrative, p. 382. 
 
 § Lyon's Narrative. London, 1821, pp. 188, 189. 
 
 B Ritchie, quoted in the Quarterly Review, 1820, No. 45, p. 228. 
 
 ^ A German, who published a geographical work in 1820, 
 p. 380. 
 
 ** Browne's Travels, 1793, p. 246. 
 
46 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 only 1000;) the larger, which, however, do not often 
 arrive, of about 12,000.* Far fewer come down the 
 Nile with the Senaar caravan, and only a few from 
 Bornou through Fezzan, by the Maugraby caravan, 
 although hunting parties are fitted out in Bornou, 
 against the negroes in the adjoining highlands. 
 
 Browne, who resided in Darfour three years, about 
 the end of the last century, says, that in the caravan 
 with which he travelled through the Desert to Cairo, 
 there were 5000 slaves. f 
 
 Burkhardt, who travelled in Nubia, &c, in 1814, in- 
 forms us4 that 5000 slaves are annually sold in the 
 market of Shendy, " of whom 2500 are carried off by 
 the Souakin merchants, and 1500 by those of Egypt; 
 the remainder go to Dongola and the Bedouins, who 
 live to the east of Shendy, towards Akbara and the Red 
 Sea ;" and he afterwards says,§ " Souakin, upon the 
 whole, may be considered as one of the first Slave Trade 
 markets in eastern Africa; it imports annually, from 
 Shendy and Senaar, from 2000 to 3000 slaves, equal- 
 ling nearly, in this respect, Esne and Siout, in Egypt, 
 and Massouah in Abyssinia, where, as I afterwards 
 learnt at Djidda, there is an annual transit from the in- 
 terior of about 3500 slaves. From these four points, 
 from the southern harbours of Abyssinia, and from the 
 Somauly and Mozambique coast, it may be computed, 
 that Egypt and Arabia draw an annual supply of 
 15,000 or 20,000 slaves, brought from the interior of 
 Africa."!! 
 
 * Memoires sur L'Egypte, torn, iii., p. 303. Lapanouse, iv., p. 77. 
 
 -j- Pinkerton's Voyages, Sec, vol. xv., p. 155. 
 
 t Burkhardt's Travels, p. 324. § lb., p. 442. 
 
 |j In the " Times" newspaper of the 14th February, 1839, 1 find 
 that on the evening of the 11th, at the meeting of the Royal Geo- 
 graphical Society, " the paper read was, an account of the survey 
 of the south-east coast of Arabia, by Captain Haines, of the Indian 
 Navy." After describing Aden, he says, "the next town of im- 
 portance is Mokhara, containing about 4500 inhabitants, with a 
 
MOHA3IMEDAN SLAVE TRADE. 47 
 
 Colonel Leake, who was in Egypt a few years ago, 
 has informed, that besides the supply from Shendy, no- 
 ticed by Burkhardt, Cairo derives an additional number 
 of 5000 annually, which are brought to the market 
 there, from Soudan, by other routes. 
 
 Dr. Holroyd, who has lately returned from travelling 
 in Nubia and Kordofan, has stated that the Pacha of 
 Egypt's troops bring into Kordofan captives from his 
 northern frontiers, to the amount of 7000 or 8000 an- 
 nually ; that about one-half so introduced are retained 
 for the use of the army and the inhabitants, while the 
 other half are sold to the merchants of Shendy and 
 Siout : that 5000 negroes annually reach Cairo by Es 
 Souan, but that others also are brought there from 
 Abyssinia by the Red Sea, and from Darfour, by the 
 Desert ; and that slaves are conveyed from Senaar, by 
 three separate routes, in daily caravans, varying in 
 extent from 5 to 200. Dr. Holroyd visited the gover- 
 nor of Kordofan in 1837 ; he had then just returned 
 from a " gasoua," (slave-hunt,) at Gibel Nooba, the 
 product of which was 2187 negroes. From these, " the 
 physician to the forces was selecting able-bodied men 
 for the army ; but so repeatedly has the Pacha waged 
 war against this chain of mountains, that the popula- 
 tion has been completely drained, and from the above 
 number, only 250 men were deemed fit for military 
 service."* 
 
 Dr. Bowring, who visited Egypt in 1837, has in- 
 formed me, that he estimates the annual importation of 
 slaves into Egypt, at from 10,000 to 12,000; that the 
 arrivals in Kordofan amount to about the same num- 
 ber : that in 1827, a single caravan brought 2820 
 
 very considerable trade, particularly in slaves. The writer has 
 seen exposed for sale in the market, at one time, no less than 700 
 Nubian girls, subject to all the brutality and insults of their mas- 
 ters ; the prices which they fetch varying from 71. to 25/. 
 * Statement by Dr. Holroyd, yet unpublished. 
 
48 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 slaves to Siout, but that, in general, the annual arrivals 
 there fluctuate between 500 and 5000 ; and that such 
 is the facility of introducing slaves, that they " now 
 filtrate into Egypt by almost daily arrivals." 
 
 From the authorities which I have now given, I 
 think I may fairly estimate the northern or Desert 
 portion of the Mahommedan Slave Trade at 20,000 per 
 annum. 
 
 I am aware that this amount is far below the num- 
 bers given by others who are well acquainted with the 
 subject ; for example, the eminent eastern traveller, 
 Count de Laborde, estimates the number that are annu- 
 ally carried into slavery from east Soudan, Abyssinia, 
 &c, at 30,000. He also tells us that, in the kingdom 
 of Darfour, an independent Slave Trade is carried on ;* 
 and Burkhardt states that Egypt and Arabia together, 
 draw an annual supply of from 15,000 to 20,000 from 
 the same countries ; but having no desire to depart 
 from the rule I have laid down, of stating nothing upon 
 conjecture, however reasonable that conjecture may be, 
 I shall not take more than 
 
 For the Desert trade, . . . 20,000f 
 
 which, added to the the annual export from 
 the eastern coast, proved to be . . 30,000 
 
 gives the number of . . . . 50,000 
 
 * Chasse aux Negres. Leon de Laborde. Paris, Dupont et 
 Cie., 1838, pp. 14 and 17. 
 
 ■f The following are some of these authorities : — 
 1st. For the number exported annually from Soudan to 
 
 Morocco, &c, I take Jackson and Riley at . . . 2000 
 
 2d. From Soudan to Mourzouk, Lyon and Ritchie give . 5000 
 
 3d. From Abyssinia to Arabia, &c, Burkhardt says about . 3500 
 
 4th. From Abyssinia, Kordofan, and Darfour, to Egypt, 
 
 Arabia, &c, I take Browne, Burkhardt, Col. Leake, 
 
 Count de Laborde, Dr. Holroyd, and Dr. Bowring, at 12,000 
 
 Total for Desert trade, 22,500 
 
SUMMARY. 49 
 
 as the annual amount of the Mohammedan Slave 
 Trade.* 
 
 Summary. 
 
 Such, then, is the arithmetic of the case; and I earn- 
 estly solicit my reader, hefore he proceeds further, to 
 come to a verdict in his own mind, upon the fairness 
 and accuracy of these figures. I am aware that it re- 
 
 * It ought to be borne in mind, that I have not taken into the 
 account the number of slaves which are required for the home 
 slavery of the Mohammedan provinces and kingdoms in Central 
 Africa. These are very extensive and populous, and travellers 
 inform us that the bulk of their population is composed of slaves. 
 We have therefore the powerful nations of Houssa, (including the 
 Felatahs,) Bornou, Begarmi, and Darfour, all draining off from 
 Soudan annual supplies of negroes, for domestic and agricultural 
 purposes, besides those procured for the foreign trade. On this 
 head, Burkhardt says,* " I have reason to believe, however, that 
 the numbers exported from Soudan to Egypt and Arabia, bear 
 only a small proportion to those kept by the Mussulmen of the 
 southern countries themselves, or, in other words, to the whole 
 number yearly derived by purchase or by force from the nations in 
 the interior of Africa. At Berber and Shendy there is scarcely a 
 house which does not possess one or two slaves, and five or six are 
 frequently seen in the same family ; the great people and chiefs 
 keep them by dozens. As high up the Nile as Senaar, the same 
 system prevails, as well as westwards to Kordofan, Darfour, and 
 thence towards Bornou. All the Bedouin tribes, also, who sur- 
 round those countries, are well stocked with slaves. If we may 
 judge of their numbers by those kept on the borders of the Nile, 
 (and I was assured by the traders that slaves were more numerous 
 in those distant countries than even at Shendy,') it is evident that 
 the number exported towards Egypt, Arabia, and Barbary, is very 
 greatly below what remains within the limits of Soudan." He 
 then states that, from his own observation, the slaves betwixt 
 Berber and Shendy, amount to not less than 1200, and that, pro- 
 bably, there are 20,000 slaves in Darfour; "and every account 
 agrees in proving, that as we proceed further westward, into the 
 populous countries of Dar Saley, Bornou, Bagarme, and the king- 
 doms of Afnou and Houssa, the proportion of the slave population 
 does not diminish." 
 
 * Burkhardt, p. 340. 
 
 5 
 
50 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 quires far more than ordinary patience to wade through 
 this mass of calculation ; I have, however, resolved to 
 present this part of the subject in its dry and uninviting 
 form, partly from utter despair of being able, by any 
 language I could use, to give an adequate image of the 
 extent, variety, and intensity of human suffering, which 
 must exist if these figures be true ; and partly from the 
 belief that a bare arithmetical detail, free from whatever 
 could excite the imagination or distress the feelings, is 
 best fitted to carry conviction along with it. I then 
 ask, is the calculation a fair one ? Some may think 
 that there is exaggeration in the result, and others may 
 complain that I have been too rigorous in striking off 
 every equivocal item, and have made my estimate as 
 if it were my object and desire, as far as possible, to 
 reduce the sum total. It signifies little to the argument, 
 whether the error be on the one side or the other ; but 
 it is of material importance that the reader, for the 
 purpose of following the argument, should now fix and 
 ascertain the number which seems to him the reason- 
 able and moderate result from the facts and figures 
 which have been produced. To me, it seems just to 
 take, annually, 
 
 For the Christian Slave Trade, . . . 150,000 
 For the Mohammedan, .... 50,000 
 
 Making a total of . . 200,000 
 
 MORTALITY. 
 
 Hitherto, I have stated less than the half of this 
 dreadful case. I am now going to show that, besides 
 the 200,000 annually carried into captivity, there are 
 claims on our compassion for almost countless cruel- 
 ties and murders growing out of the Slave Trade. I 
 am about to prove that this multitude of our enslaved 
 
MORTALITY SEIZURE. 51 
 
 fellow men is but the remnant of numbers vastly- 
 greater, the survivors of a still larger multitude, over 
 whom the Slave Trade spreads its devastating hand, 
 and that for every ten who reach Cuba and Brazil, 
 and become available as slaves, — fourteen, at least, are 
 destroyed. 
 
 This mortality arises from the following causes :— 
 
 1. The original seizure of the slaves. 
 
 2. The march to the coast and detention there. 
 
 3. The middle passage. 
 
 4. The sufferings after capture, and after landing. 
 And 
 
 5. The initiation into slavery, or the " seasoning," as 
 it is termed by the planters. 
 
 It will be necessary for me to make a few remarks 
 on each of these heads ; and 1st, As to the mortality 
 incident to the period of 
 
 Seizure. 
 
 " The whole, or the greater part of that immense continent, is a 
 field of warfare and desolation ; a wilderness, in which the inhabitants 
 are wolves to each other." — Speech of Bryan Edwards. 
 
 On the authority of public documents, parliamentary 
 evidence, and the works of African travellers, it ap- 
 pears that the principal and almost the only cause of 
 war in the interior of Africa, is the desire to procure 
 slaves for traffic ; and that every species of violence, 
 from the invasion of an army, to that of robbery by a 
 single individual, is had recourse to, for the attainment 
 of this object. 
 
 Lord Muncaster, in his able historical sketches of the 
 Slave Trade,* in which he gives us an anylysis of the 
 evidence taken before the Privy Council and the House 
 of Commons, about the year 1790, clearly demon- 
 strates the truth of my assertion, at the period when 
 he published his work, (1792 ;) and the authorities 
 
 * Lord Muncaster's Historical Sketches. London, 1792. 
 
52 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 from that time down to the present day, as clearly show 
 that the most revolting features of the Slave Trade, in 
 this respect, (at least, as regards the native chiefs and 
 slave-traders of Africa,) have continued to exist, and 
 do now exist, 
 
 Bruce, who travelled in Abyssinia in 1770, in de- 
 scribing the slave-hunting expeditions there, says : 
 " The grown-up men are all killed, and are then muti- 
 lated, parts of their bodies being always carried away 
 as trophies; several of the old mothers are also killed, 
 while others, frantic with fear and despair, kill them- 
 selves. The boys and girls of a more tender age, are 
 then carried off in brutal triumph,"* 
 
 Mr. Wilberforce, in his letter to his constituents in 
 1807,f has described the mode in which slaves are 
 usually obtained in Africa, and he quotes several pas- 
 sages from the work of the enterprising traveller, Mun- 
 go Park, bearing particularly on this subject. Park 
 says, " The king of Bambarra having declared war 
 against Kaarta, and dividing his army into small de- 
 tachments, overran the country, and seized on the in- 
 habitants before they had time to escape ; and in a few 
 days the whole kingdom of Kaarta became a scene of 
 desolation, this attack was soon retaliated ; Daisy, the 
 king of Kaarta, took with him 800 of his best men, and 
 surprised, in the night, three large villages near Kooni- 
 akary, in which many of his traitorous subjects had 
 taken up their residence ; all these, and indeed all the 
 able men who fell into Daisy's hands, were immediately 
 put to death. "J Mr. Wilberforce afterwards says: "In 
 another part of the country, we learn from the most 
 respectable testimony, that a practice prevails, called 
 4 village-breaking.' It is precisely the * tegria' of Mr. 
 Park, with this difference, that, though often termed 
 
 * Bruce's Travels in Abyssinia. 
 
 ■j- Wilberforce's Letter on the Abolition of the Slave Trade. 
 London. 1807, p. 392. 
 
 t Park's Travels, London, 1817, vol. i., p. 164. 
 
MORTALITY SEIZURE. 53 
 
 making war, it is acknowledged to be practised for the 
 express purpose of obtaining victims for the slave-mar- 
 ket. The village is attacked in the night; if deemed 
 needful, to increase the confusion, it is to set on fire, 
 and the wretched inhabitants, as they are flying naked 
 from the flames, are seized and carried into slavery." 
 " These depredations are far more commonly perpe- 
 trated by the natives on each other, and on a larger or 
 smaller scale, according to the power and number of 
 the assailants, and the resort of ships to the coast ; it 
 prevails so generally as throughout the whole extent of 
 Africa to render person and property utterly insecure."* 
 And in another place, " Every man who has acquired 
 any considerable property, or who has a large family, 
 the sale of which will produce a considerable profit, 
 excites in the chieftain near whom he resides, the same 
 longings which are called forth in the wild beast by 
 the exhibition of his proper prey ; and he himself lives 
 in a continual state of suspicion and terror."f 
 
 The statements of Mr. Wilberforce have been cor- 
 roborated by Mr. Bryan Edwards, (from whom I have 
 already quoted,) himself a dealer in slaves, and an able 
 and persevering advocate for the continuance of the 
 traffic. In a speech delivered in the Jamaica Assem- 
 bly, he says, " I am persuaded that Mr. Wilberforce 
 has been very rightly informed as to the manner in 
 which slaves are very generally procured. The intel- 
 ligence I have collected from my own negroes, abun- 
 dantly confirms his account ; and I have not the smallest 
 doubt that in Africa the effects of this trade are precise- 
 ly such as he represents them to be." 
 
 But it may be said, admitting these statements to be 
 true, they refer to a state of things in Africa which 
 does not now exist. A considerable period of time has 
 indeed elapsed since these statements were made ; but 
 it clearly appears, that the same system has obtained, 
 
 * Wilberforce's Letter, &c, p. 23. t Ibid, p. 28, 
 
 5* 
 
54 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 throughout the interior of Africa, down to the present 
 time ; nor is it to be expected that any favorable 
 change will take place during the continuance of the 
 slave-traffic. 
 
 Professor Smith, who accompanied Captain Tuckey 
 in the expedition to the Congo in 1816, says, " Every 
 man I have conversed with acknowledges that, if white 
 men did not come for slaves, the wars, which nine 
 times out often result from the European Slave Trade, 
 would be proportionally less frequent."* 
 
 Captain Lyon states that when he was at Fezzan, in 
 1819, Mukni, the reigning Sultan, was continually en- 
 gaged in these slave-hunts, in one of which 1800 were 
 captured, all of whom, excepting a very few, either 
 perished on their march before they reached Fezzan, 
 or were killed by their captor.f 
 
 Major Gray, who travelled in the vicinity of the 
 River Gambia and Dupuis, who was British Consul at 
 Ashantee about the same period, 1820, both agree in 
 attributing the wars, which they knew to be frequent 
 in the countries where they travelled, to the desire of 
 procuring slaves for traffic.^ Dupuis narrates a speech 
 of the king of Ashantee. " Then my fetische made me 
 strong, like my ancestors, and I killed Dinkera, and 
 took his gold, and brought more than 20,000 slaves to 
 Coomassy. Some of these people being bad men, I 
 washed my stool in their blood for the fetische. But, 
 then, some were good people, and these I sold or gave 
 to my captains ; many, moreover, died, because this 
 country does not grow too much corn, like Sarem, 
 and what can I do 1 Unless I kill or sell them, they 
 will grow strong, and kill my people. Now, you must 
 tell my master (the king of England) that these slaves 
 
 * Tuckey 's Expedition, &c, p. 187. 
 
 f Lyon's Travels, p. 129. 
 
 i Gray's Travels in Western Africa. London, 1825, p. 97. 
 
MORTALITY SEIZURE. 55 
 
 can work for him, and if he wants 10,000 he can have 
 them."* 
 
 Captain Moresby, a naval officer, who was stationed 
 on the eastern coast in 1821, and who had peculiar 
 opportunities of learning the mode in which slaves were 
 obtained, informed me that " The Arab Traders, from 
 the coast of Zanzebar, go up the country, provided 
 with trinkets and beads, strung in various forms ; thus 
 they arrive at a point where little intercourse has taken 
 place, and where the inhabitants are in a state of bar- 
 barism ; here they display their beads and trinkets to 
 the natives, according to the number of slaves they 
 want. A certain village is doomed to be surprised ; in 
 a short time the Arabs have their choice of its inhabi- 
 tants — the old and infirm are either left to perish, or 
 be slaughtered." 
 
 In 1822 our Minister at Paris thus addressed Count 
 de Villele : " There seems to be scarcely a spot on that 
 coast (from Sierra Leone to Cape Mount) which does 
 not show traces of the Slave Trade, with all its attend- 
 ant horrors ; for the arrival of a ship, in any of the 
 rivers on the windward coast, being the signal for war 
 between the natives, the hamlets of the weaker party 
 are burnt, and the miserable survivors carried off and 
 sold to the slave-traders." 
 
 We have obtained most valuable information as to 
 the interior of Africa, from the laborious exertions of 
 Denham and Clapperton. They reached Soudan, or 
 Nigritia, by the land-route through Fezzan and Bor- 
 nou, in 1823, and the narrative of their journey fur- 
 nishes many melancholy proofs of the miseries to which 
 Africa is exposed through the demands for the Slave 
 Trade. Major Denham says : " On attacking a place, 
 it is the custom of the country instantly to fire it ; and, 
 as they (the villages) are all composed of straw huts 
 only, the whole is shortly devoured by the flames. 
 
 * Dupuis' Residence in Ashantee. London, 1824, p. 164, 
 
56 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 The unfortunate inhabitants fly quickly from the de- 
 vouring element, and fall immediately into the hands 
 of their no less merciless enemies, who surround the 
 place ; the men are quickly massacred, and the women 
 and children lashed together and made slaves."* Den- 
 ham then tells us that the Begharmi nation had been 
 discomfited by the Sheik of Bornou " in five different 
 expeditions, when at least 20,000 poor creatures were 
 slaughtered, and three-fourths of that number, at least, 
 driven into slavery. "f And, in speaking of these wars, 
 he uses this remarkable expression — " The season of 
 the year had arrived (25th November) when the sove- 
 reigns of these countries go out to battle." He also 
 narrates the terms of an alliance betwixt the Sheik of 
 Bornou and the Sultan of Mandara. " This treaty of 
 alliance was confirmed by the Sheik's receiving in mar- 
 riage the daughter of the Sultan, and the marriage-por- 
 tion was to be the produce of an immediate expedition 
 into the Kerdy country, by the united forces of these 
 allies. The results were as favorable as the most sa- 
 vage confederacy could have anticipated. Three thou- 
 sand unfortunate wretches were dragged from their 
 native wilds, and sold to perpetual slavery, while pro- 
 bably double that number were sacrificed to obtain 
 them."X 
 
 Denham, himself, accompanied an expedition against 
 Mandara, one of the results of which was, that the 
 town, Darkalla, was quickly burnt, and another smaller 
 town near it, and the few inhabitants who were found 
 in them, chiefly infants and aged persons, were put to 
 death without mercy, and thrown into the flames. "§ 
 
 Commodore Owen, who was employed in the survey 
 of the eastern coast of Africa, about the years 1823 
 and 1824, says : "The riches of Quilimane consisted, 
 in a trifling degree, of gold and silver, but principally 
 
 * Denham and Clapperton's Travels, &c, in Africa. London, 
 1826, p. 164. 
 
 fib. p. 214. * lb. p. 116. § lb. p. 131. 
 
MORTALITY SEIZURE. 57 
 
 of grain, which was produced in such quantities as to 
 supply Mozambique. But the introduction of the Slave 
 Trade stopped the pursuits of industry, and changed . 
 those places, where peace and agriculture had formerly 
 reigned, into the seat of war and bloodshed. Contend- 
 ing tribes are now constantly striving to obtain, by 
 mutual conflict, prisoners as slaves for sale to the Por- 
 tuguese, who excite these wars, and fatten on the blood 
 and wretchedness they produce." 
 
 In speaking of Inhambane, he says: "The slaves 
 they do obtain are the spoils of war among the petty 
 tribes, who, were it not for the market they thus find 
 for their prisoners, would in all likelihood remain in 
 peace with each other, and probably be connected by 
 bonds of mutual interest."* 
 
 Mr. Ashmun, agent of the American Colonial Society, 
 in writing to the Board of Directors, from Liberia, in 
 1823, says, " The following incident I relate, not for 
 its singularity, for similar events take place, perhaps, 
 every month in the year, but it has fallen under my t^' 
 own observation, and I can vouch for its authenticity: — 
 King Boatswain, our most powerful supporter, and 
 steady friend among the natives, (so he has uniformly 
 shown himself,) received a quantity of goods on trust 
 from a French slaver, for which he stipulated to pay 
 young slaves — he makes it a point of honor to be punc- 
 tual to his engagements. The time was at hand when 
 he expected the return of the slaver, and he had not 
 the slaves. Looking around on the peaceable tribes 
 about him for his victims, he singled out the Queaks, a 
 small agricultural and trading people of most inoffensive 
 character. His warriors were skilfully distributed to 
 the different hamlets, and making a simultaneous as- 
 sault on the sleeping occupants in the dead of the night, 
 accomplished, without difficulty or resistance, in one 
 hour, the annihilation of the whole tribe ; every adult, 
 
 * Owen's Voyage, &c, vol. i., p. 287, 
 
58 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 man and woman, was murdered — every hut fired ! 
 Very young children, generally, shared the fate of their 
 parents ; the boys and girls alone were reserved to pay 
 the Frenchman."* 
 
 The Commissioners at Sierra Leone, in a despatch 
 of April 10, 1825, speaking of a great increase in the 
 Slave Trade, which had then lately taken place on the 
 coast between that colony and the Gallinas, state that 
 the increased demand for slaves, consequent thereon, 
 was " the cause of the destructive war which had raged 
 in the Sherbro' for the last eighteen months, between 
 the ' Cassoos,' a powerful nation living in the interior, 
 and the Fi people, and Sherbro' Bulloms, who live near 
 the water-side, and are completely under the influence 
 of the slaving chiefs and factors settled in the neighbor- 
 hood. "f The Cassoos are represented as having car- 
 ried fire, rapine, and murder throughout the different 
 villages through which they passed, most of the women 
 and children of which, together with the prisoners, were 
 immediately sold to the slave factors, who were at hand 
 to receive them. 
 
 We have also, on this head, the more recent testi- 
 mony of Lander and Laird. Lander accompanied Clap- 
 perton from Badagry to Sockatoo, and on the death of 
 Clapperton he returned to Badagry, with little variation, 
 by the same route. In 1830 he was sent out by the 
 British Government to Africa, and succeeded in naviga- 
 ting the Niger from Boosa, where Park was drowned, 
 to the sea, in the Bight of Benin. In his journal, he ob- 
 serves that slavery has " produced the most baleful 
 effects, causing anarchy, injustice, and oppression to 
 reign in Africa, and exciting nation to rise up against 
 nation, and man against man ; it has covered the face 
 of the country with desolation. All these evils, and 
 many others, has slavery accomplished ; in return for 
 
 • Ashmun's Life. New York, 1835, p. 160. 
 f Class A, 1826, p. 7. 
 
MORTALITY SEIZURE. 59 
 
 which the Europeans, for whose benefit, and by whose 
 connivance and encouragement it has flourished so ex- 
 tensively, have given to the heartless natives ardent 
 spirits, tawdry silk, dresses, and paltry neck laces of 
 beads."* 
 
 Laird ascended the Niger and its tributary the 
 Tschadda, in 1832, and was an eye-witness of the cruel- 
 ties consequent on the Slave Trade, while in the river 
 near to the confluence of the two streams. He says, 
 speaking of the incursions of the Felatahs, " Scarcely a 
 night passed, but we heard the screams of some unfortu- 
 nate beings that were carried off into slavery by these 
 villainous depredators. The inhabitants of the towns 
 in the route of the Felatahs fled across the river on the 
 approach of the enemy." "A few days after the arri- 
 val of the fugitives, a column of smoke rising in the air, 
 about five miles above the confluence, marked the ad- 
 vance of the Felatahs ; and in two days afterwards the 
 whole of the towns, including Addah Cuddah, and five 
 or six others, were in a blaze. The shrieks of the un- 
 fortunate wretches that had not escaped, answered by 
 the loud wailings and lamentations of their friends and 
 relations (encamped on the opposite bank of the river,) 
 at seeing them carried off into slavery, and their habi- 
 tations destroyed, produced a scene, which, though 
 common enough in the country, has seldom, if ever be- 
 fore, been witnessed by European eyes, and showed to 
 me, in a more striking light than I had hitherto beheld 
 it, the horrors attendant upon slavery." * 
 
 Rankin, in the narrative of his visit to Seirra Leone 
 in 1833, says : The warlike Sherbros had recently in- 
 vaded the territories of the Timmanees, and had fallen 
 on the unguarded Rckel, which became a prey to the 
 flames. " The inhabitants who could not escape across 
 
 * Lander's Records. London, 1830, vol. i., p. 38. 
 f Laird and Oldfield's Narrative. London, 1837, vol. i, pp. 
 149, 247. 
 
60 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 the river to Magbelly perished, or were made slaves, 
 and the town was reduced to ashes."* 
 
 Colonel Nicolls, late Governor at Fernando Po, has 
 informed me, that when he visited the town of Old Ca- 
 lebar, in 1834, he found the natives boasting of a pre- 
 datory excursion, in which they had recently been 
 engaged, in which they had surprised a village, killed 
 those who resisted, and carried off the remainder as 
 slaves. In alluding to this excursion, Colonel Nicolls 
 heard an African boy, who had formed one of the party, 
 declare that he had killed three himself! 
 
 The Rev. Mr. Fox, a Wesleyan missionary at the 
 Gambia, in a letter dated 13th March, 1837, addressed 
 to the Secretary of the Wesleyan Missionary Society, 
 says, — " I visited Jamalli a few weeks ago, and also 
 Laming, another small Mandingo town, on the way : 
 at the latter place 1 counted twelve huts that had been 
 destroyed by fire, and at the former about forty. Pro- 
 ceeding to the Foulah town, about half a mile east- 
 ward, I found it was not in the least injured, but, like 
 the other two, was without inhabitants, not a soul was 
 to be seen." 
 
 " Foolokolong, a large Foulah town in Kimmington's 
 dominions, has lately been attacked by Wooli, and, I 
 believe, nearly the whole of it destroyed, the cattle 
 driven away, and many of the inhabitants killed, and 
 many others taken prisoners. On Wednesday evening 
 last, T returned from a hasty visit to the upper river. I 
 went as far as Fattatenda. At Bannatenda, not quite 
 half the way, I found a poor aged Foulah woman in 
 irons, who, upon inquiry, I found was from Fooloko- 
 long, one of the many who were captured in the recent 
 war, and that she was to be sent to the south side of the 
 river to be sold for a horse; I immediately rescued the 
 half-famished, and three-parts naked female from the 
 horrors of slavery, by giving a good horse, broke off 
 
 * Rankin's Sierra Leone. London, 1836, vol. ii., p. 259. 
 
MORTALITY SEIZURE. 61 
 
 her chains, and brought her to this settlement, where, 
 by a singular but happy coincidence, she met with her own 
 brother, (who lives upon Hattaba's land,) who, hearing 
 that she, her daughter, and daughter's children, had 
 been taken in the war, had been a considerable way up 
 the river to inquire after them, but heard nothing of 
 them, and had consequently returned. I, of course, gave 
 the woman up to her brother, from whom, as well as 
 herself, and several Foulahs who came to see her, I re- 
 ceived a number of blessings." 
 
 In another part of the same letter he writes, — " From 
 the king himself I learned that they brought 350 Fou- 
 lahs from Foolokolong, (Kimmington's largest Foulah 
 town,) besides 100 whom they killed on the spot." 
 
 In another letter, dated 5th January, 1838, Mr. Fox 
 says, " The Bambarras have proceeded a considerable 
 distance down the north bank of the river, (Gambia,) 
 have pillaged and destroyed several small towns, taken 
 some of the inhabitants into slavery, and a few people 
 have been killed." 
 
 "The neighborhood of M'Carthy's Island is again 
 in a very disturbed state. Scarcely are the rains over, 
 and the produce of a plentiful harvest gathered in, ere 
 the noise of battle and the din of warfare is heard at a 
 distance, with all its attendant horrors; mothers, snatch- 
 ing up their children with a few necessary articles, flee 
 for their lives ; towns, after being pillaged of as much 
 cattle, &c, as the banditti require, are immediately set 
 on fire ; columns of smoke ascend the heavens ; the 
 cries of those who are being butchered may be more 
 easily conceived than expressed ; and those who escape 
 destruction are carried into the miseries of hopeless 
 slavery. A number of Bambarras are again on the north 
 bank of the river, not far from this place, and the poor 
 Foulahs at Jamalli have consequently fled to this island 
 for protection, bringing with them as many of their 
 cattle, and other things, as they could." 
 
 The Rev. Mr. M'Brair, another Wesleyan missionary, 
 6 
 
62 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 who has seen much of the interior of Africa, in the 
 vicinity of the Gambia, from which he has recently re- 
 turned to this country, makes the following observations, 
 in a letter also to the Secretary of the Wesleyan Mis- 
 sionary Society : 
 
 " On other occasions a party of men-hunters associate 
 together, and, falling suddenly upon a small town or 
 village during the night, they massacre all the men that 
 offer any resistance, and carry away the rest of the in- 
 habitants as the best parts of their spoil. Or, when a 
 chieftain thinks himself sufficiently powerful, he makes 
 the most frivolous excuses for waging war upon his 
 neighbor, so that he may spoil his country of its in- 
 habitants. Having been in close connexion with many 
 of the liberated Africans in M'Carthy's Island, 250 miles 
 up the Gambia, and also in St. Mary's, at the mouth of 
 that river, we had many opportunities of learning the 
 various modes in which they had been captured ; from 
 which it appeared that the wholesale method of seizure 
 is by far the most frequent, and that, without this plan, 
 a sufficient number of victims could not be procured for 
 the market; so that it may be called the prevailing way 
 of obtaining slaves." 
 
 " Whilst I was in M'Carthy's Island, a capture took 
 place at the distance of half a day's journey from my 
 abode. The king of Woolli, on a very slight pretence, 
 fell upon a village during the night, slew six men, and 
 carried off forty captives. The inhabitants also of a 
 neighboring place were destined to the same fate, but 
 having had timely notice of his approach, they saved 
 themselves by a precipitous flight, and M'Carthy's 
 Island was filled for a time with refugees from all the 
 country round about." 
 
 The Rev. Mr. Morgan, another Wesleyan mission- 
 ary, lately from the Gambia, writes to the Secretary as 
 follows : — " I feel confident that the Slave Trade has 
 established feuds among them (the African tribes around 
 the Gambia,) by which they will be embroiled in war 
 
MORTALITY SEIZURE. 63 
 
 for generations to come, unless the disposition be de- 
 stroyed by the Christian religion, or their circumstances 
 be changed by civilization." 
 
 I must not leave this part of my subject without call- 
 ing attention to the extraordinary facts which have re- 
 cently been made public, regarding the practices of the 
 Pacha of Egypt, and the chiefs in Nubia and Darfour. 
 There has been revealed to us a new feature in the 
 mode of procuring negroes for slaves ; and we find that 
 troops regularly disciplined are, at stated seasons, led 
 forth to hunt down and harry the defenceless inhabitants 
 of Eastern Nigritia. 
 
 In a despatch from Lieutenant-Colonel Campbell, 
 Her Majesty's Consul at Cairo, of date 1st December 
 1837,* we are informed that the Consul waited on Ma- 
 homed Ali, and communicated to him " that statements 
 had gone home to the Government and people of 
 England, from eye-witnesses, that slave-hunts (gazoua) 
 had been carried on by the officers and troops of the 
 pacha ; that large numbers of negroes had been taken, 
 and had been distributed among the soldiers, in liquida- 
 tion of the arrears of their pay ; that on one occasion 
 the gazoua had collected 2700 slaves, of whom 250 
 had been forced among the ranks of his army, and the 
 remainder had been divided among the officers and 
 soldiers at fixed prices, according to the state of their 
 arrears." 
 
 The pacha professed not to know that his army had 
 been employed in slave-hunts for the purpose of dis- 
 charging arrears of pay ; but he admitted he was aware 
 that his officers had carried on the Slave Trade for their 
 own account, " a conduct of which he by no means ap- 
 proved." We have no farther particulars in this import- 
 ant despatch : but the enterprise of a traveller, Count De 
 Laborde, who has lately returned from Nubia and Egypt, 
 will enable me to introduce those of my readers who 
 
 * Class B, Farther Series, 1837, p. 69. 
 
64 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 have not seen his work,* to the scenes of cruelty and 
 devastation perpetrated by the pacha's troops, which he 
 has graphically described. 
 
 The narrative, of which I can only give a brief out- 
 line, was communicated to him by a French officer, 
 who went to Cairo in 1828, and resided ten years in 
 Egypt. 
 
 M. there learnt that four expeditions, called 
 
 gaswahs, annually set out from Obeid, the capital of 
 Kordofan, towards the south, to the mountains inhabited 
 by the Nubas negroes. The manner and object of 
 their departure are thus described : " One day he heard 
 a great noise ; the whole village appeared in confusion ; 
 the cavalry were mounted, and the infantry discharging 
 their guns in the air, and increasing the uproar with 
 their still more noisy hurras. M. , on inqui- 
 ring the cause of the rejoicing, was exultingly told by a 
 follower of the troop, " It is the gaswah." " The gas- 
 wah ! for what — gazelles?" " Yes, gazelles ; here are 
 the nets, ropes, and chains ; they are to be- brought 
 home alive." On the return of the expedition, all the 
 people went out, singing and dancing, to meet the hunt- 
 ers. M. went out also, wishing to join in the 
 
 rejoicing. He told Count Laborde he never could for- 
 get the scene presented to his eyes. What did he see? 
 What gain did these intrepid hunters, after twenty days 
 of toil, drag after them ? Men in chains ; old men car- 
 ried on litters, because unable to walk ; the wounded 
 dragging their weakened limbs with pain, and a multi- 
 tude of children following their mothers, who carried 
 the younger ones in their arms. Fifteen hundred ne- 
 groes, corded, naked, and wretched, escorted by 400 
 soldiers in full array. This was the gaswah. These 
 the poor gazelles taken in the Desert. He himself af- 
 terwards accompanied one of these gaswahs. The ex- 
 pedition consisted of 400 Egyptian soldiers, 100 Be- 
 
 * Chasse aux Negres, Leon de Laborde, Paris, 1838. 
 
MORTALITY SEIZURE. 65 
 
 douin cavalry, and twelve village chiefs, with peasants 
 carrying provisions. On arriving at their destination, 
 which they generally contrive to do before dawn, the 
 cavalry wheel round the mountain, and by a skilful 
 movement form themselves into a semi-circle on one 
 side, whilst the infantry enclose it on the other. The 
 negroes, whose sleep is so profound that they seldom 
 have time to provide for their safety, are thus complete- 
 ly entrapped. At sunrise the troops commence opera- 
 tions by opening a fire on the mountain with musketry 
 and cannon ; immediately the heads of the wretched 
 mountaineers may be seen in all directions, among the 
 rocks and trees, as they gradually retreat, dragging 
 after them the young and infirm. Four detachments 
 armed with bayonets, are then despatched up the moun- 
 tain in pursuit of the fugitives, whilst a continual fire is 
 kept up from the musketry and cannon below, which 
 are loaded only with powder, as their object is rather to 
 dismay than to murder the inhabitants. The more cou- 
 rageous natives, however, make a stand by the mouths 
 of the caves, dug for security against their enemies. 
 They throw their long poisoned javelins, covering them- 
 selves with their shiefds, while their wives and children 
 stand by them, and encourage them with their voices ; 
 but when the head of the family is killed, they surren- 
 der without a murmur. When struck by a ball, the 
 negro, ignorant of the nature of the wound, may gene- 
 rally be seen rubbing it with earth till he falls through 
 loss of blood. The less courageous fly with their fami- 
 lies to the caves, whence the hunters expel them by 
 firing pepper into the hole. The negroes, almost blind- 
 ed and suffocated, run into the snares previously pre- 
 pared, and are put in irons. If after the firing no one 
 makes his appearance, the hunters conclude that the 
 mothers have killed their children, and the husbands 
 their wives and themselves. When the negroes are 
 taken, their strong attachment to their families and 
 lands is apparent. They refuse to stir, some clinging 
 6* 
 
66 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 to the trees with all their strength, while others em- 
 brace their wives and children so closely, that it is ne- 
 cessary to separate them with the sword ; or they are 
 bound to a horse, and are dragged over brambles and 
 rocks until they reach the foot of the mountain, bruised, 
 bloody, and disfigured. If they still continue obstinate, 
 they are put to death. 
 
 Each detachment, having captured its share of the 
 spoil, returns to the main body, and is succeeded by 
 others, until the mountain, " de battue en battue," is 
 depopulated. If from the strength of the position, or 
 the obstinacy of the resistance, the first assault is un- 
 successful, the General adopts the inhuman expedient 
 of reducing them by thirst ; this is easily effected by 
 encamping above the springs at the foot of the moun- 
 tain, and thus cutting off their only supply of water. 
 The miserable negroes often endure this siege for a 
 week ; and may be seen gnawing the bark of trees to 
 extract a little moisture, till at length they are compelled 
 to exchange their country, liberty, and families, for a 
 drop of water. They every day approach nearer, and 
 retreat on seeing the soldiers, until the temptation of the 
 water shown them becomes too strong to be resisted. 
 At length they submit to have the manacles fastened on 
 their hands, and a heavy fork suspended to their necks, 
 which they are obliged to lift at every step. 
 
 The march from the Nuba mountains to Obeid is 
 short. From thence they are sent to Cairo. There 
 the pacha distributes them as he thinks proper ; the 
 aged, infirm, and wounded, are given to the Bedouins, 
 who are the most merciless of masters, and exact their 
 due of hard labor with a severity proportioned to the 
 probable short duration of the lives of their unhappy 
 victims. 
 
 At Obeid alone 6000 human beings are annually 
 dragged into slavery, and that at the cost of 2000 more, 
 who are killed in the capture. The king of Darfour also 
 imports for sale yearly 8000 or 9000 slaves, a fourth 
 
MORTALITY SEIZURE. 67 
 
 of whom usually die during the fatigues of a forced 
 march : they are compelled, by the scarcity of provi- 
 sions, to hurry forward with all speed. In vain the 
 exhausted wretches supplicate for one day's rest ; they 
 have no alternative but to push on, or be left behind a 
 prey to the hungry jackals and hyaenas. " On one oc- 
 casion," says the narrator, " when, a few days after the 
 march of a caravan, I rapidly crossed the same desert, 
 mounted on a fleet dromedary, I found my way by the 
 newly-mangled human carcasses, and by them I was 
 guided to the nightly halt." 
 
 Dr. Holroyd, whom I have already mentioned, in a 
 letter to me, of date 14th January, 1839, says, in refer- 
 ence to these " gazouas" of the Egyptian troops, " I 
 should think, if my information be correct, that, in ad- 
 dition to 7000 or 8000 taken captive, at least 1500 
 were killed in defence or by suffocation at the time of 
 being taken ; for I learnt that, when the blacks saw the 
 troops advancing, they took refuge in caves ; the sol- 
 diers then fired into the caverns, and, if this did not 
 induce them to quit their places of concealment, they 
 made fires at the entrance, and either stifled the negroes, 
 or compelled them to surrender. Where this latter 
 method of taking them was adopted, it was not an un- 
 common circumstance to see a female with a child at 
 her breast, who had been wounded by a musket-ball, 
 staggering from her hiding-place, and dying immediate- 
 ly after her exit."* 
 
 * In the same letter, dated January 14, 1839, Dr. Holroyd hav- 
 ing mentioned that he had "brought from Kordofan, at his own re- 
 quest, a negro (an intelligent boy) about twelve years of age, who 
 had been seized by Mahomed Ali's troops from Gebel Noobah, and 
 from whom all particulars can be obtained in reference to that in- 
 human method of taking the blacks." I asked that the boy might be 
 questioned as to what he had seen of the slave-hunts. Dr. Holroyd 
 has favored me with the following a Statement of Almas, a negro 
 boy taken in the gazzua of Gebel Noobah, three years ago, by the 
 troops of Mahomed Alt Pacha. Almas is a native of Korgo, a very 
 
68 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 I could add, were it necessary, a thousand other in- 
 stances of the scenes of cruelty and bloodshed which 
 are exhibited in Africa, having their origin in the Slave 
 Trade ; but enough has been said to prove the assertion 
 with which I set out, that the principal and almost the 
 only cause of war in the interior of Africa is the desire 
 to procure slaves for traffic; and that the only differ- 
 ence betwixt the former times and the present day is 
 this — that the mortality consequent on the cruelties of 
 the system has increased in proportion to the increase of 
 
 considerable district on the south side of Gebel Noobah ; it is go- 
 verned by a sheik, who is under the command of a local sultan. He 
 was living at Korgo at the time of his capture, and says that the 
 pacha's troops made the attack during the night, whilst the negroes 
 were sleeping; that they fired repeatedly upon the district with can- 
 non and muskets, both loaded with shot ; and that they burnt the 
 straw huts of the negroes. As they escaped from their burning huts 
 they were seized by the troops : many, especially the children, were 
 burnt to death, and many were killed. Those who ran away, and 
 were pursued by the soldiers, defended themselves with stones, 
 spears, and trombashes ; the latter, an iron weapon in common use 
 among the natives of these mountains. 
 
 " The negroes retreated to the caves in the sides of the moun- 
 tains, from whence they were eventually obliged to come forth, from 
 fear of suffocation from the fires made at the entrances, or from 
 want of food and water. He never heard of pepper, mentioned by 
 Laborde, as having been used in loading the guns, or of firing it into 
 the caves to blind or stifle the negroes. Pronged stakes were fas- 
 tened round the throats of the men, and their hands were fixed in 
 blocks of wood nailed together. Boys, of twelve or fourteen years, 
 had their hands only manacled, and the young children and women 
 were without any incumbrance. Two or three times Almas saw 
 a stubborn slave drawn (to use his expression) like a carriage, by 
 a horse across the rocks, until he was dead. He cannot say how 
 many were killed in the attack ; he thinks 500 were taken along 
 with him from Korgo, but many of these died of thirst, hunger, and 
 fatigue, on their march to Kordofan. Almas's father and brother 
 were captured along with him, and the former was compelled to 
 wear the pronged stick from Gebel Noobah to Kordofan. They 
 are both soldiers at Sobeyet. His mother was seized by the sultan 
 of Baggarah, who makes expeditions continually against the inha- 
 bitants of Gebel Noobah." 
 
MORTALITY SEIZURE. G9 
 
 the traffic, which, it appears, has doubled in amount, as 
 compared with the period antecedent to 1790. 
 
 I shall now estimate, as nearly as I can, the probable 
 extent of mortality peculiarly incident to the period of 
 seizure ; but the difficulty of this is great, because our 
 authorities on this point are not numerous. Lord Mun- 
 caster notices a statement of an African Governor to 
 the Committee of 1790 : — " Mr. Miles said, he will not 
 admit it to be war, only skirmish-fighting; and yet," 
 Lord Muncaster adds, " Villault, who was on the Gold 
 Coast in 1663, tells us, that in one of these 'skirmishes' 
 above 60,000 men were destroyed ; and Bosman says 
 that in two of these ■ skirmishes' the outrage was so 
 great, that above 100,000 men were killed upon the 
 spot. Mr. Devaynes also informs us that, while he was 
 in the country, one of these ' skirmishes' happened be- 
 tween the kings of Dahorney and Eyo, in which 60,000 
 lost their lives."* 
 
 The Rev. John Newton, rector of St. Mary's Wool- 
 nooth, (who at one period of his life was engaged in 
 slave-traffic on the coast of Africa,) observes, "I verily 
 believe that the far greater part of the wars in Africa 
 would cease, if the Europeans would cease to tempt 
 them by offering goods for slaves ; and, though they do 
 not bring legions into the field, their wars are bloody. 
 I believe the captives reserved for sale are fewer than 
 the slain. I have not sufficient data to warrant calcu- 
 lation, but I suppose that not less than 100,000 slaves 
 are exported annually from all parts of Africa. If but 
 an equal number are killed in war, and if many of 
 these wars are kindled by the incentive of selling their 
 prisoners, what an annual accumulation of blood must 
 
 * Lord Muncaster on the Slave Trade, p. 42. 
 
70 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 there be crying against the nations of Europe concerned 
 in this trade !" # 
 
 I have no modern authority to support the specific 
 statement of Newton and Lord Muncaster, excepting 
 that of Denham, who says, " That in one instance 
 twenty thousand were killed, for sixteen thousand car- 
 ried away into slavery ;"f and in another case, that 
 '* probably more than double'''' the number of those 
 captured for slaves, fell a sacrifice in the onset of the 
 captors. :f 
 
 The second head of mortality, arising from the March 
 and Detention, before being embarked, comes next in 
 order ; and first as to the 
 
 March. 
 
 " The Begarmese," says Browne, in his journey to 
 Darfour in 1793, " attack on horseback the Kardee, 
 Serrowa, Showa, Battah, and Mulgui tribes, and, seizing 
 as many captives as possible, drive them like cattle to 
 Begarmi."§ Mungo Park informs us that, "by far the 
 greater number of slaves purchased by Europeans on 
 the coast are brought down in large caravans from the 
 inland countries, of which many are unknown, even by 
 name to the Europeans. 
 
 " I was met," he says, " by a coffle (caravan) of 
 slaves, about seventy in number, coming from Sego. 
 They were tied together by their necks, with thongs 
 of bullocks' hide twisted like a rope, seven slaves upon 
 a thong, and a man with a musket between every 
 seven. Many of the slaves were ill-conditioned, and a 
 great number of them women ; they were going to Mo- 
 rocco, by the way of Ludamar and the Great Desert. "|| 
 
 * Newton on the Slave Trade. London, 1788, p. 30. 
 f Denham's Narrative, p. 214. + Ibid, p. 116. 
 
 § See Leyden's Discoveries, vol. i., p. 413. 
 | Park's Travels, vol. i., pp. 438, 290. 
 
MORTALITY MARCH. 71 
 
 Jn another part of his journal, Park says that, on his 
 route to Pisania, (a distance of 500 miles,) he joined a 
 coffle, under a slattee, (slave-merchant,) Kaarfa, who 
 was particularly kind to him, and whom he describes 
 as " a worthy negro, with a mind above his condition — 
 a good creature," and therefore not likely to be among 
 the most cruel in the treatment of his slaves. While this 
 slattee was collecting the coffle, Park arrived at his house. 
 Kaarfa liberally offered to keep him there till the country 
 should be fit for travelling. On the third day after his 
 arrival, Park fell ill with the fever, and he bestows 
 great praise on his "benevolent landlord," for his kind- 
 ness and attention.* We are afterwards informed 
 of the treatment of the slaves during the journey, which, 
 be it remembered, was performed under the direction 
 of this "worthy, good, and benevolent negro." It ap- 
 pears that " The slaves are commonly secured by put- 
 ting the right leg of one, and the left of another into 
 the same pair of fetters. By supporting the fetters 
 with a string, they can walk, though very slowly. 
 Every four slaves are likewise fastened together by the 
 neck, with a strong pair of twisted thongs ; and in the 
 night an additional pair of fetters is put on their hands, 
 and sometimes a light iron chain passed around their 
 necks." 
 
 " Such of them as evince marks of discontent are 
 secured in a different manner ; a thick billet of wood is 
 cut about three feet long, and, a smooth notch being 
 made upon one side of it, the ancle of the slave is bolted 
 to the smooth part by means of a strong iron staple, one 
 prong of which passes on each side of the ancle. All 
 these fetters and bolts are made from native iron. In 
 the present case they were put on by the blacksmith as 
 soon as the slaves arrived from Kancaba, and were not 
 taken off until the morning when the coffle departed for 
 Gambia." 
 
 * Park's Travels, vol. L, p. 388, &c. 
 
72 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 He goes on to say, "Even to those who accompanied 
 the caravan as a matter of choice, the toil was immense ; 
 and they travelled sometimes from morning till night 
 without tasting a morsel of food." And afterwards — 
 " During this day's travel, two slaves, a woman and a 
 girl, were so much fatigued that they could not keep up 
 with the coffle. They were severely whipped and 
 dragged along, until about three o'clock in the after- 
 noon, when they were both affected with vomiting, by 
 which it was discovered that they had eaten clay." He 
 then narrates a case of great cruelty : one of the female 
 slaves had become quite exhausted, and every exertion 
 was made by the whip to cause her to keep up with 
 the coffle. When every effort failed, " the general cry 
 of the coffle was ' kang-tegi,' (cut her throat.) I had 
 not walked forward a mile, when one of Kaarfa's do- 
 mestic slaves came up to me with poor Nealee's gar- 
 ment upon the end of his bow, and exclaimed, ' Nealee 
 is lost ;' he afterwards said, he had left her on the 
 road."* A few days after this took place, a party of 
 Serawoolie traders joined the coffle, and one of their 
 male slaves became also completely exhausted ; he was 
 whipped and tortured to no purpose, and then left in 
 charge of another slave, who, it was generally believed, 
 put him to death. 
 
 It appears that there is also great suffering when 
 these poor victims are conveyed to the coast, by the 
 rivers. Falconbridge says, " While I was on the coast, 
 during one of the voyages I made, the black traders 
 brought down in different canoes from 1200 to 1500 
 negroes, which had been purchased at one fair." They 
 consisted of all ages. Women sometimes form a part of 
 them who happen to be so far advanced in their preg- 
 nancy as to be delivered during their journey from the 
 fairs to the coast. And there is not the least room to 
 doubt, but that, even before they can reach the fairs, 
 
 * Park's Travels, vol. i., p. 507, &c. 
 
MORTALITY MARCH. 73 
 
 great numbers perish from cruel usage, want of food, 
 travelling through inhospitable deserts, &c. They are 
 brought in canoes, at the bottom of which they lie, hav- 
 ing their hands tied, and a strict watch is kept over 
 them. Their usage, in other respects, during the pass- 
 age, is equally cruel. Their allowance of food is so 
 scanty as barely to support nature. They are, besides, 
 much exposed to the violent rains which frequently fall 
 here, being covered only with mats that afford but a 
 slight defence; and, as there is usually water at the 
 bottom of the canoes, from leaking, they are scarcely 
 ever dry."* 
 
 Here, again, it may be rejoined, " But these were the 
 practices of the last century." Riley informs us that 
 Sidi Hamet, the Moor, narrated to him, as an instance 
 of the sufferings consequent on the route by the Desert, 
 that the caravan which he accompanied from Wednoon 
 to Timbuctoo, in 1807, consisted on its setting out of 
 1000 men and 4000 camels; but only twelve camels 
 and twenty-one men escaped alive from the Desert. f 
 Let us examine whether these cruel sufferings have been 
 mitigated in our own times ; and whether we may flat- 
 ter ourselves that Africa is no longer the scene of such 
 atrocities. Burkhardt, in 1814, accompanied a caravan 
 from Shendy in Nubia, across the Desert, to Suakin on 
 the Red Sea. There were slaves with the caravan on 
 their way to Arabia. In the middle of the journey the 
 caravan was alarmed by a threatened attack of robbers ; 
 they " moved on," we are told, "in silence; nothing 
 was heard but the groans of a few infirm female slaves, 
 and the whips of their cruel masters. "ij: He also says 
 that the females are almost universally the victims of 
 the brutal lusts of their drivers. 
 
 Major Gray, while travelling in the country of Galam 
 in 1821, fell in with a part of the Kaartan force, which 
 
 * Falconbridge on the Slave Trade. Lond. 1788, pp. 12, 13, 19, &c. 
 
 j- Riley's Narrative, p. 361. 
 
 i Burckhardt's Travels, pp. 381, 336. 
 
 7 
 
74 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 he said had taken 107 prisoners, chiefly women and 
 children. "The men were tied in pairs by the necks, 
 their hands secured behind their backs ; the women by 
 their necks only, but their hands were not left free from 
 any sense of feeling for them, but in order to enable 
 them to balance the immense loads of pang, corn, or 
 rice, which they were forced to carry on their heads, 
 and the children (who were unable to walk, or sit on 
 horseback) behind their backs. They were hurried 
 along at a pace little short of running, to enable them 
 to keep up with the horsemen, who drove them on as 
 Smithfield drovers do fatigued bullocks. Many of the 
 women were old, and by no means able to endure such 
 treatment." On a subsequent day he says, " The suf- 
 ferings of the poor slaves during a march of nearly 
 eight hours, partly under an excessively hot sun and 
 east wind, heavily laden with water, of which they were 
 allowed to drink but very sparingly, and travelling bare 
 foot on a hard and broken soil, covered with long dried 
 reeds, and thorny underwood, may be more easily con- 
 ceived than described." 
 
 In the course of his journey Major Gray fell in with 
 another detachment of slaves, and he says, " The wo- 
 men and children (all nearly naked, and carrying heavy 
 loads) were tied together by the neck, and hurried along 
 over a rough stony path, that cut their feet in a dread- 
 ful manner. There were a great number of children, 
 who, from their tender years, were unable to walk, and 
 were carried, some on the prisoners' backs, and others 
 on horseback behind the captors, who, to prevent their 
 falling off, tied them to the back part of the saddle with 
 a rope made from the bark of the baoball, which was so 
 hard and rough that it cut the back and sides of the poor 
 little innocent babes, so as to draw the blood. This, 
 however, was only a secondary state of the sufferings 
 endured by those children, when compared to the dread- 
 fully blistered and chafed state of their seats, from con- 
 stant jolting on the bare back of the horse, seldom 
 
MORTALITY MARCH. 75 
 
 going slower than a trot, or smart amble, and not un- 
 frequently driven at full speed for a few yards, and 
 pulled up short."* 
 
 In speaking of the route by the Desert, Lyon says:f 
 " Children are thrown with the baggage on the camels, 
 if unable to walk ; but, if five or six years of age, the 
 poor little creatures are obliged to trot on all day, even 
 should no stop be made for fourteen or fifteen hours, as 
 I have sometimes witnessed." " The daily allowance 
 of food is a quart of dates in the morning, and half a 
 pint of flour, made into bazeen, at night. Some masters 
 never allow their slaves to drink after a meal, except at 
 a watering-place." " None of the owners ever moved 
 without their whips, which were in constant use. Drink- 
 ing too much water, bringing too little wood, or falling 
 asleep before the cooking was finished, were considered 
 nearly capital crimes ; and it was in vain for these poor 
 creatures to plead the excuse of being tired, — nothing 
 could avert the application of the whip." " No slave 
 dares to be ill or unable to w T alk ; but, when the poor 
 sufferer dies, the master suspects there must have been 
 something ' wrong inside,' and regrets not having libe- 
 rally applied the usual remedy of burning the belly with 
 a red-hot iron; thus reconciling themselves to their 
 cruel treatment of these unfortunate wretches." 
 
 This description is confirmed by Caillie, who, in his 
 account of his journey from Timbuctoo through the 
 Desert, gives the following case of barbarity, which he 
 says he had the misfortune to see too often repeated : — 
 " A poor Bambara slave of twenty -five years was cru- 
 elly treated by some Moors, who compelled him to 
 walk, without allowing him to halt for a moment, or to 
 quench his burning thirst. The complaints of this un- 
 fortunate creature might have moved the hardest heart. 
 Sometimes he would beg to rest himself against the 
 
 a 
 
 * Gray's Travels in Africa, pp. 290, 295, and 323. 
 f Lyon, p. 297. 
 
76 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 crupper of a camel ; and at others he threw himself 
 down on the sand in despair. In vain did he implore, 
 with uplifted hands, a drop of water; his cruel masters 
 answered his prayers and his tears only with stripes."* 
 In another part of his work, Caillie says — 
 " Our situation was still the same ; the east wind 
 blew with violence ; and, far from affording us any re- 
 freshment, it only threatened to bury us under the 
 mountains of sand which it raised ; and, what was still 
 more alarming, our water diminished rapidly from the 
 extreme drought which it occasioned. Nobody suffered 
 more intensely from thirst than the poor little slaves, 
 who were crying for water. Exhausted by their suffer- 
 ings and their lamentations, these unhappy creatures 
 fell on the ground, and seemed to have no power to 
 rise ; but the Moors did not suffer them to continue there 
 long when travelling. Insensible to the sufferings which 
 childhood is so little fitted to support, these barbarians 
 dragged them along with violence, beating them inces- 
 santly till they had overtaken the camels, which were 
 already at a distance. "f 
 
 In 1824, Denham and Clapperton penetrated to Ni- 
 gritia by the Desert from Fezzan, the route usually 
 taken by slave-caravans going to the north of Africa. 
 In narrating his excursion to Munga, Major Denham 
 speaks of a caravan which he met at Kouka, consisting 
 of ten merchants from Soudan with nearly 100 slaves, 
 and he observes, " If the hundreds, nay thousands, of 
 skeletons that whiten in the blast between this place and 
 Mourzouk, did not of themselves tell a tale replete with 
 woe, the difference of appearance in all slaves here, 
 (where they are fed tolerably,) and the state in which 
 they usually arrive in Fezzan, would but too clearly 
 prove the acuteness of the sufferings which commence 
 on their leaving the negro country ; going as they do, 
 poor creatures, nearly naked, the cold of Fezzan, in the 
 
 • Caillie's Travels, vol. ii. p. 89. f Ibid., p. 114. 
 
MORTALITY MARCH. 77 
 
 winter season, kills them by hundreds."* This fact, as 
 to the change of climate, is also noticed by Captain 
 Lyon, who, speaking of the passage across the moun- 
 tains of Fezzan, says, " Feb. 12th, Ther. 3(P below 0°. 
 Water freezes, and the poor negroes in great distress 
 from the cold."| 
 
 When the travellers arrived at the well of Meshroo, 
 Denham says : " Round this spot were lying more than 
 one hundred skeletons : our camels did not come up till 
 dark, and we bivouacked in the midst of those unearthed 
 remains of the victims of persecution and avarice, after 
 a long day's journey of twenty-six miles, in the course 
 of which one of our party counted 107 of these skele- 
 tons." Shortly afterwards, he adds ; " During the last 
 two days we had passed on an average from sixty to 
 eighty or ninety skeletons each day ; but the numbers 
 that lay about the wells at El Hammar were countless. "t 
 Jackson informs§ us that in 1305 "a caravan from 
 Timbuctoo to Ta filet was disappointed at not finding 
 water at the usual watering-place, and entirely perish- 
 ed ; 2000 persons and 1300 camels." 
 
 Dr. Holroyd, in the letter to me which I have already 
 quoted, in speaking of the " gaswah" in Kordofan, says : 
 " These slave-hunts have produced a great depopulation 
 in the districts where they are practised ; there is not 
 only a terrible waste of life in the attempts to capture 
 the negroes, but after they are seized there is so much 
 of ill-usage and brutality, that I have been assured that 
 no less than thirty per cent, perish in the first ten days 
 after their seizure." 
 
 Dr. Bowrincr stated to me, that M in conversations 
 which I have had with the domestic slaves in the towns 
 of Egypt, they talk with the greatest horror of the suf- 
 ferings connected with their first experience of the bit* 
 
 * Denham, pp. 172, 280. f Lyon, p. 298. 
 
 \ Denham, p. 12. 
 
 § Jackson's Travels in Africa, 1809, p. 239, 
 7 * 
 
78 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 terness of slavery. And these are but the beginning of 
 sorrows. In the progress across the Desert, many pe- 
 rish from thirst and from fatigue. I have often heard 
 their miseries described on their way, from the poverty 
 of the fellahs and insufficiency of the caravans, which 
 are often charged with an excessive number of slaves. 
 An estimate being made of the greatest number which 
 it is possible to preserve with the supply of water that 
 remains, all the rest are abandoned, and die of starva- 
 tion in the sandy wilderness." 
 
 " I will give you from the mouth, and nearly in the 
 words, of a female slave at Cairo, her account of the 
 journey across the Desert to Siout. ' We had a long, 
 long journey, and we suffered very much. We had not 
 food enough to eat, and sometimes we had no drink at 
 all, and our thirst was terrible. When we stopped, al- 
 most dying for want of water, they killed a camel, and 
 gave us his blood to drink. But the camels themselves 
 could not get on, and then they were killed, and we had 
 their flesh for meat and their blood for water. Some of 
 the people were too weak to get on, and so they were 
 left in the Desert to die. The fellahs were some of them 
 good people, and when we were tired allowed us to ride 
 upon the camels ; but there were many who would 
 never let the negroes ride, but forced them always to 
 walk, always over the sand — but when we had been 
 days without water, many dropped down and were left 
 upon the sand ; so that, when we got to the end of our 
 journey, numbers of those that had been with us were 
 with us no longer.' " 
 
 Dr. Holroyd says that " These unfortunate individu- 
 als (those selected for the army) were marched down 
 to Kartoom, fourteen days' journey, completely naked ; 
 and, to add to their misery, a wooden stake, six or 
 seven feet long, and forked at one extremity, was at- 
 tached to the neck of one by means of a cross bar, re- 
 tained in its position by stripes of bull's hide ; to the 
 other end of the stake an iron ring was fastened, which 
 
MORTALITY SEIZURE. 79 
 
 encircled the throat of another of the poor harmless 
 creatures. They were then unmercifully driven to 
 Kartoom, with scarcely anything to eat on the way, 
 and compelled to traverse a burning desert with a very 
 sparing and scanty supply of water. They were des- 
 patched in companies of fifties, and so great were their 
 privations and fatigue on the journey, that a letter ar- 
 rived at Kordofan, addressed to Mustapha Bey, from 
 Shorshid Pacha, of Kartoom, Governor General of 
 Soudan, and which was read during a visit I made to 
 the divan of the former, in which the latter stated, that 
 of fifty slaves who left Kordofan some days before, only 
 thirty-five were living on the arrival of the caravan at 
 Kartoom." 
 
 Richard Lander, in his account of Captain Clapper- 
 ton's last journey in 1826, in which he attended that 
 traveller, speaking of the state of the slaves whom he 
 saw on their journeys, observes : " In their toilsome 
 journeyings from one part of the country to another, 
 it must be admitted that the captured slaves undergo 
 incredible hardships." He left Socatoo, with a party 
 of traders, and the " king of Jacoba," who had fifty 
 slaves, whom he was conducting (with heavy loads on 
 their heads) to his own country. Two days afterwards 
 Lander was informed that the whole of these slaves 
 were missing ; and on search being made, it was ascer- 
 tained that they had all perished from excessive fa- 
 tigue and want of water .* 
 
 Mr. Oldfield, who accompanied Laird in the expedi- 
 tion up the Niger, in 1833, in giving a description of 
 Bocqua market, says : " Under the mats and in the en- 
 closures, are to be seen male and female slaves, from 
 the age of five up to thirty. . Some of these children of 
 misfortune, more intelligent than others, are to be seen 
 sitting pensive and melancholy, apparently in deep 
 thought, while their poor legs are swelled from confine- 
 
 * Lander's Records, vol. L, p. 301 ; and vol. ii., p. 95. 
 
80 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 ment in irons, or being closely stowed at the bottom of 
 a canoe; and, he adds, "It is painful to contemplate 
 the number of slaves annually sold at this market, most 
 of whom are forwarded to the sea-side."* 
 
 Many more extracts might have been taken, from the 
 remarks of modern travellers, on this branch of the sub- 
 ject ; but enough has been adduced to prove that the 
 cruelties and consequent mortality arising from the 
 march after seizure have not decreased since the time 
 of Falconbridge and Park. 
 
 I shall only further add, on the authority of Dr. 
 Meyen, (a German who, a few years, ago, published an 
 account of a Voyage round the World,) that " M. Men- 
 dez, the author of a very learned treatise on the Causes 
 of the great Mortality of the Negro Slaves, estimates 
 the number of those who die, merely on the journey 
 from the interior to the coast, at Jive-twelfths of the 
 whole."\ 
 
 Detention. 
 
 The next cause of mortality arises from the detention 
 of the slaves on the coast, before they are embarked, 
 and this occurs, for the most part, when the vessel for 
 which they may be destined has not arrived, or is not 
 ready to sail, or may be in dread of capture after sailing. 
 
 A gentleman resident at Senegal in 1818, stated to 
 his correspondent at Paris, that u No one in the town is 
 ignorant that there are here 600 wretched creatures 
 shut up in the slave yards, waiting for embarkation. 
 The delay which has occurred causing a serious ex- 
 pense, they receive only what is sufficient to keep them 
 alive, and they are made to go out for a short space of 
 time, morning and evening, loaded with irons.*)* 
 
 When Commodore Owen visited Benguela in 1825, 
 
 * Laird and Old field, vol. i., p. 409. 
 
 j" Dr. Meyen, German edition, vol. i. p. 77. 
 
 * 13th Report of the African Institution, Ap. G. p. 99. 
 
MORTALITY DETENTION. 81 
 
 he says, " We had here an opportunity of seeing bond 
 slaves of both sexes chained together in pairs. About 
 100 of these unhappy beings had just arrived from a 
 great distance in the interior. Many were mere skele- 
 tons, laboring under every misery that want and fatigue 
 could produce. In some, the fetters had, by their con- 
 stant action, worn through the lacerated flesh to the 
 bare bone, the ulcerated wound having become the re- 
 sort of myriads of flies, which had deposited their eggs^ 
 in the gangrenous cavities."* 
 
 Oiseau, commanding the brig Le Louis, on comple- 
 ting his cargo of slaves at the Old Calebar, thrust the 
 whole of the unfortunate beings between decks, a height 
 of nearly three feet, and closed the hatches for the night. 
 When morning made its appearance, fifty of the poor 
 sufferers had paid the debt of nature. The wretch coolly 
 ordered the bodies of his victims to be thrown into the 
 river, and immediately proceeded on shore to complete 
 his execrable cargo. f 
 
 Richard Lander tells us that the Brazen, in which he 
 went to Africa in 1925, captured a Spanish brigantine 
 which was waiting off Accra, for a cargo of slaves. A 
 few days after this capture, the commander of the Bra- 
 zen landed at Papoe, and demanded the slaves which 
 were to have been embarked in the brigantine. They 
 were ultimately given up, and Lander says, " The slaves 
 at length made their appearance, and exhibited a long 
 line of melancholy faces, and emaciated frames, wasted 
 by disease and close confinement, and by their having 
 suffered dreadfully from scantiness of food, and the im- 
 pure air of their prison-house. They were in a com- 
 plete state of nudity, and heavily manacled ; several of 
 them were lamed by the weight of their irons, and their 
 skin sadly excoriated from the same cause. :f 
 
 At the close of this journey, Lander says : — " I saw 
 
 * Owen, vol. ii. p. 234. t Class B, 1825, p. 123. 
 
 t Lander's Records, vol. i. p. 31. 
 
82 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 400 slaves at Badagry in the Bight of Benin, crammed 
 into a small schooner of eighty tons. The appearance of 
 these unhappy human beings was squalid and miserable 
 in the extreme ; they were fastened by the neck in pairs, 
 only one-fourth of a yard of chain being allowed for 
 each, and driven to the beach by a parcel of hired 
 scoundrels, whilst their associates in cruelty were in 
 front of the party pulling them along by a narrow band, 
 their only apparel, which encircled the waist." " Ba- 
 dagry being a general mart for the sale of slaves to 
 European merchants, it not unfrequently happens that 
 the market is either overstocked with human beings, or 
 no buyers are to be found ; in which case the mainte- 
 nance of the unhappy slaves devolves solely on the Go- 
 vernment. The king then causes an examination to be 
 made, when the sickly, as well as the old and infirm, 
 are carefully selected, and chained by themselves in one 
 of the factories, (five of which, containing upwards of 
 one thousand slaves of both sexes, were at Badagry 
 during my residence there;) and next day the majority 
 of these poor wretches are pinioned and conveyed to 
 the banks of the river, where having arrived, a weight 
 of some sort is appended to their necks, and being 
 rowed in canoes to the middle of the stream, they are 
 flung into the water, and left to perish by the pitiless 
 Badagrians. Slaves, who for other reasons are rejected 
 by the merchants, undergo the same punishment, or are 
 left to endure more lively torture at the sacrifices, by 
 which means hundreds of human beings are annually 
 destroyed."*' 
 
 Mr. Leonard informs us, " that about 1830, the king 
 of Loango told the officers of the Primrose that he could 
 load eight slave-vessels in one week, and give each 400 
 or 500 ; but that, having now no means of disposing of 
 the greater part of his prisoners, he was obliged to kill 
 them. And, shortly before the Primrose arrived, a 
 
 * Lander's Records, vol. ii. pp. 241, 250. 
 
MORTALITY DETENTION. 83 
 
 great number of unfortunate wretches, who had been 
 taken in a predatory excursion, after having been made 
 use of to carry loads of the plundered ivory, &c, to the 
 coast, on their arrival there, as there was no market for 
 them, and as the trouble and expense of their support 
 would be considerable, they were taken to the side of a 
 hill, a little beyond the town, and coolly knocked on the 
 head."* 
 
 In 1833, Mr. Oldfield found several dozen human 
 skulls lining the bank of the river Nunn, (one of the 
 mouths of the Niger,) at a barracoon or slave-house, 
 which he discovered were the remains of slaves who 
 had died there.f 
 
 An intelligent master of a merchant vessel, who, for 
 many years past, has been engaged in the African 
 trade, informs me, that after the slave-dealing captains 
 have made their selections of the slaves brought on 
 board for sale, the unfortunate creatures who may be 
 rejected, " are sent immediately on shore, and marched 
 down to the barracoon, chained too-ether, a distance of 
 five miles. I have seen the most piteous entreaties 
 made by the poor rejected creatures to the captain to 
 take them, for they knew that to be returned on shore 
 was only to encounter a worse fate by starvation." He 
 is speaking of the river Bonny, and he goes on to say, 
 " Ju Ju town contains about twelve barracoons : they 
 are built to contain from 300 to 700 slaves each. I 
 have seen from 1500 to 2000 slaves at a time, belong- 
 ing to the several vessels then in the river." 
 
 " I have known disease to make dreadful havoc in 
 these places, more especially in the year 1831, when 
 the small-pox carried off 200 in one barracoon. Great 
 numbers are carried off annually by diarrhoea and other 
 diseases." 
 
 Colonel Nicolls has stated to me that, during his 
 
 * Leonard's Voyage to Western Africa, p. 147. 
 | Laird and Oldfield's Journal, vol. i., p. 339. 
 
84 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 residence at Fernando Po, he visited the river Came- 
 roons, where he saw a number of slaves in a barracoon; 
 " they were confined in irons, two and two, and many 
 of them had the irons literally grating against their 
 bones through the raw flesh." 
 
 It is stated by a naval officer sailing in the Preven- 
 tive Squadron, in a letter to a relative, dated about a 
 year ago, and communicated to me, that in 1837, hav- 
 ing been employed in Blockading a Portuguese brig, up 
 one of the rivers in the Bight of Biafra, " On arriving 
 at my staiion, I had positive information that the Portu- 
 guese had bought upwaids of 400 slaves, and was 
 about to sail. By some means or other she got infor- 
 mation that a British boat was blockading her, conse- 
 quently she postponed her sailing for several weeks. 
 Shortly afterwards, on my inquiring into her state, I 
 found 300 of her slaves had died, chiefly of starvation, 
 and a few were shot by the Portuguese whilst attempt- 
 ing to escape. A k\v days afterwards the brig sailed 
 without any slaves, all with the exception of about a 
 score, having fallen victims to the system pursued." 
 
 Captain Cook has informed me that he saw many 
 blind negroes in Quilimane, (1837,) who subsisted by 
 begging ; they were the remains, he was informed, of 
 a cargo landed from a Monte Videan vessel, which had 
 been attacked by ophthalmia. If they lived, they were 
 left to starve. 
 
 He also says, that in September, 1837, a number of 
 slaves were suffocated on board the brig Generous, at 
 Quilimane. The boatswain had, it appeared, shut the 
 hatches close down after the slaves had been put below 
 in the evening ; it was his duty to have kept the hatch 
 uncovered, and to have placed guards over them ; but 
 this would have required his own vigilance, and he 
 considered a sound sleep was to him worth all the slaves 
 on board, especially as they cost him nothing." This 
 case came to Captain Cook's knowledge in consequence 
 of a quarrel between the captain and the boatswain. 
 
MORTALITY DETENTION. 85 
 
 M The pecuniary loss was all that was regretted by the 
 captain." 
 
 Captain Cook adds, that slaves who "die on board, 
 in port, are never interred on shore, but are invariably 
 thrown overboard, when they sometimes float backward 
 and forward with the tide for a week, should the sharks 
 and alligators not devour them. Should a corpse 
 chance to be washed on shore at the top of high-water, 
 it is permitted to remain until the vultures dispose of 
 it." " I have known one to be near the Custom-house 
 upwards of a week, during which time the stench was 
 intolerable." 
 
 In a letter addressed by Captain Cook to the editor 
 of the Standard, dated 16th July, 1838, he says that 
 instances have been known of slaves having been 
 buried alive in Quilimane for some trifling offence, and 
 that the consequent punishment (if there was any at all,) 
 was a mere trifle, as imprisonment for a month, and he 
 adds, — x 
 
 " The fact, however, which I am now about to state, 
 occurred in August, 1837, and came under my own ob- 
 servation, and to all of which I am ready to bear testi- 
 mony on oath, if required. Slaves to the number of 
 250, or thereabouts, male and female, adults and chil- 
 dren, were brought in canoes from Senna, a Portuguese 
 settlement at some distance in the interior of Africa, to 
 be sold at Quilimane, there being at that time several 
 slavers lying in the river. These unfortunate beings 
 were consigned to a person holding a high civil ap- 
 pointment under the Portuguese Government, (the col- 
 lector of customs :) these poor creatures were from a 
 part of the country where it is said that the natives 
 make bad slaves ; consequently, as there was abundance 
 of human flesh in the market, they did not meet with a 
 ready sale. The wretch to whom they were consigned 
 actually refused them sustenance of any kind. Often 
 have I been compelled to witness the melancholy spec- 
 tacle of from twelve to twenty of my fellow creatures, 
 8 
 
96 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 without distinction of age or sex, chained together, 
 with a heavy iron chain around the neck, wandering 
 about the town in quest of food to satisfy the cravings 
 of nature, picking up bones and garbage of every de- 
 scription from the dung heaps, snails from the fields, 
 and frogs from the ditches, and, when the tide receded, 
 collecting the shell -fish that were left on the bank of 
 the river, or sitting round a fire roasting and eagerly 
 devouring the sea-weed. 
 
 " Again and again have I seen one or more of these 
 poor creatures, when unable from sickness to walk, 
 crawling on their hands and knees, accompanying the 
 gang to which they were chained when they went in 
 search of their daily food .... for one could not move 
 without the whole. In consequence of this treatment, 
 they soon became so emaciated that the slave-dealers 
 would not purchase them on any terms ; in this state, 
 horrid as it must appear, the greater part were left to 
 perish, without food, medicine, or clothing, for the lit- 
 tle piece of coarse cotton cloth worn by a few of the 
 females, did not deserve the name, and could answer 
 no other purpose than to lodge the vermin with which 
 they were covered ; their bones protruding through the 
 skin, they presented the appearance of living skeletons, 
 lingering amidst hunger and disease, till death, their 
 best friend, released most of them at once from suffer- 
 ing and bondage." 
 
 From these extracts, it is evident that this branch of 
 the case furnishes an item of no small magnitude in the 
 black catalogue of negro destruction. 
 
 I now proceed to the 
 
MORTALITY MIDDLE PASSAGE. 87 
 
 Middle Passage. 
 
 11 The stings of a wounded conscience man cannot inflict ; but nearly 
 all which man can do to make his fellow creatures miserable, without 
 defeating his purpose by putting a speedy end to their existence, will 
 still be here effected: and it will still continue true, that never can so 
 much misery be found condensed into so small a space as in a slave- 
 ship during the middle passage." — TVLlberforce, Letter, 18j7. 
 
 It was well observed by Mr. Fox, in a debate on the 
 Slave Trade, that " True humanity consists not in a 
 squeamish ear ; it consists not in starting or shrinking 
 at such tales as these, but in a disposition of heart to 
 relieve misery. True humanity appertains rather to 
 the mind than to the nerves, and prompts men to use 
 real and active endeavors to execute the actions which 
 it suggests. " 
 
 In the spirit of this observation, I now go on to 
 remark that the first feature of this deadly passage, 
 which attracts our attention, is the evident insufficiency, 
 in point of tonnage, of the vessels employed, for the 
 cargoes of human beings which they are made to 
 contain. 
 
 In 1788 a law passed the British Legislature, by 
 which it was provided that vessels, under 150 tons, 
 should not carry more than five men to every three 
 tons ; that vessels above 150 tons should not carry 
 more than three men to every two tons; and that the 
 height of slave-vessels, between decks, should not be 
 less than five feet. In 1813 it was decreed by the 
 government of Portugal and Brazil that two tons should 
 be allowed for every five men ; and the Spanish " Ce- 
 dula," of 1817, adopted the same scale. It is under- 
 stood that the Spanish and Portuguese ton bears the 
 proportion of one and a half to the British ton. The 
 allowance in British transports is three men to every 
 two tons. 
 
88 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 Men, Tons. 
 The lowest rate then allowed by the Bri- 
 tish was - - - - - 5 to 3 
 And by Spain, Portugal, and Brazil, it 
 
 should be - - - - 5 to 3 
 
 But for British soldiers the regulation is 3 to 2 
 and, although this allowance in the transport of troops 
 seems to be liberal, when compared with the space af- 
 forded for slaves, even here complaints have often been 
 made of the insufficiency. 
 
 Let us then keep in view these rates of tonnage, as 
 we proceed to ascertain the accommodation which has 
 been, and is now, afforded to the negroes on the middle 
 passage ; and here, at least, one reason will be appa- 
 rent for the increase of suffering and mortality which 
 have recently occurred, viz. that the extent of accom- 
 modation, limited as it was, has been greatly curtailed. 
 
 We have a faithful description of the miseries of the 
 middle passage, from the pen of an eye-witness, Mr. 
 Falconbridge. His account refers to a period antece- 
 dent to 1790. He tells us, that " The men negroes, on 
 being brought aboard ship, are immediately fastened to- 
 gether two and two, by handcuffs on their wrists, and 
 by irons riveted on their legs." " They are frequently 
 stowed so close as to admit of no other posture than 
 lying on their sides. Neither will the height between 
 decks, unless directly under the grating, permit them 
 the indulgence of an erect posture, especially where 
 there are platforms, which is generally the case. These 
 platforms are a kind of shelf, about eight or nine feet in 
 breadth, extending from the side of the ship towards the 
 centre. They are placed nearly midway between the 
 decks, at the distance of two or three feet from each 
 deck. Upon these the negroes are stowed in the same 
 manner as they are on the deck underneath." After 
 mentioning some other arrangements, he goes on to say, 
 " It often happens that those who are placed at a dis- 
 tance from the buckets, in endeavoring to get to them, 
 
MORTALITY MIDDLE PASSAGE. 89 
 
 tumble over their companions, in consequence of their 
 being shackled. These accidents, although unavoida- 
 ble, are productive of continual quarrels, in which some 
 of them are always bruised. In this distressed situation 
 they desist from the attempt, and .... This 
 becomes a fresh source of broils and disturbances, and 
 tends to render the situation of the poor captive wretches 
 still more uncomfortable." 
 
 " In favorable weather they are fed upon deck, but in 
 bad weather their food is given to them below. Num- 
 berless quarrels take place among them during their 
 meals ; more especially when they are put upon short 
 allowance, which frequently happens. In that case, the 
 weak are obliged to be content with a very scanty por- 
 tion. Their allowance of water is about half a pint 
 each, at every meal, 
 
 " Upon the negroes refusing to take sustenance, I 
 have seen coals of fire, glowing hot, put on a shovel, 
 and placed so near their lips as to scorch and burn 
 them, and this has been accompanied with threats of 
 forcing them to swallow the coals, if they any longer 
 persisted in refusing to eat. These means have gene- 
 rally the desired effect. I have also been credibly in- 
 formed that a certain captain in the Slave Trade poured 
 melted lead on such of the negroes as obstinately re- 
 fused their food." Falconbridge then tells us that the 
 negroes are sometimes compelled to dance and to sing, 
 and that, if any reluctance is exhibited, the cat-o'-nine 
 tails is employed to enforce obedience. He goes on to 
 mention the unbounded license given to the officers and 
 crew of the slavers, as regards the women ; and, speak- 
 ing of the officers, he says, they " are sometimes guilty 
 of such brutal excesses as disgrace human nature." 
 " But," he continues, " the hardships and inconve- 
 niences suffered by the negroes during the passage are 
 scarcely to be enumerated or conceived. They are far 
 more violently affected by the sea-sickness than the 
 Europeans. It frequently terminates in death, espe^ 
 8* 
 
90 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 cially among the women. The exclusion of the fresh 
 air is among the most intolerable. Most ships have 
 air-ports ; but, whenever the sea is rough and the rain 
 heavy, it becomes necessary to shut these and every 
 other conveyance by which air is admitted. The fresh 
 air being thus excluded, the negroes' rooms very soon 
 grow intolerably hot. The confined air, rendered nox- 
 ious by the effluvia exhaled from their bodies, and by 
 being repeatedly breathed, soon produces fevers and 
 fluxes, which generally carry off great numbers of them. 
 During the voyages I made I was frequently a witness 
 to the fatal effects of this exclusion of the fresh air. I 
 will give one instance', as it serves to convey some idea, 
 though a very faint one, # of the state of these unhappy 
 beings. Some wet and blowing weather having occa- 
 sioned the port-holes to be shut, and the gratings to be 
 covered, fluxes and fevers among the negroes ensued. 
 My profession requiring it, I frequently went down 
 among them, till at length their apartments became so 
 extremely hot, as to be only sufferable for a very short 
 time. But the excessive heat was not the only thing 
 that rendered their situation intolerable. The deck, 
 that is, the floor of their rooms, was so covered with the 
 blood and mucus which had proceeded from them in 
 consequence of the flux, that it resembled a slaughter- 
 house. It is not in the power of the human imagination 
 to picture to itself a situation more dreadful or more 
 disgusting. 
 
 * One circumstance has struck me very forcibly. I have received 
 communications, both by letter and in conversation, from many 
 naval officers who have boarded slave-ships, and I have observed 
 that, without an exception, they all make this observation — "No 
 words can describe the horrors of the scene, or the sufferings of the 
 negroes." I have recently shown these pages to a naval officer, 
 now a captain in the service, who had long been employed in the 
 preventive squadron, requesting him to point out any error into 
 which I might have fallen. He replied, " Your statement i* true 
 as far as it goes ; but it is, after all, only a faint picture of the 
 reality." 
 
MORTALITY MIDDLE PASSAGE. 91 
 
 " Numbers of the slaves having fainted, they were 
 carried on deck, where several of them died ; and the 
 rest were with great difficulty restored. Jt had nearly 
 proved fatal to me also; the climate was too warm to 
 admit the wearing of any clothing but a shirt, and that 
 I had pulled off before I went down ; notwithstanding 
 which, by only continuing among them for about a 
 quarter of an hour, I was so overcome by the heat, 
 stench, and foul air, that I had nearly fainted ; and it 
 was not without assistance that I could get upon deck. 
 The consequence was, that I soon after fell sick of the 
 same disorder, from which I did not recover for several 
 months. A circumstance of this kind sometimes re- 
 peatedly happens in the course of a voyage, and often 
 to a greater degree than what has just been described ; 
 particularly when the slaves are much crowded, which 
 was not the case at that time, the ship having more 
 than 100 short of the number she was to have taken in,* 
 yet, out of 38D, 105 died on the passage, — a proportion 
 seemingly very great, but by no means uncommon." 
 
 He proceeds to notice the case of a Liverpool vessel, 
 which took on board at the Bonny river nearly TOO 
 slaves (more than three to each ton !) ; and Falcon- 
 bridge says, — " By purchasing so great a number, the 
 slaves were so crowded, that they were even obliged to 
 lie one upon another. This occasioned such a mortality 
 among them, that, without meeting with unusual bad 
 weather, or having a longer voyage than common, 
 nearly one-half of them died before the ship arrived in 
 the West Indies." He then describes the treatment of 
 of the sick as follows : — " The place allotted for the 
 sick negroes is under the half-deck, where they lie on 
 the bare plank. By this means, those who are ema- 
 ciated frequently have their skin, and even their flesh, 
 entirely rubbed off, by the motion of the ship, from the 
 prominent parts of the shoulders, elbows, and hips, so 
 as to render the bones in those parts quite bare. The 
 excruciating pain which the poor sufferers feel from 
 
92 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 being obliged to continue in so dreadful a situation, fre- 
 quently, for several weeks, if they happen to live so 
 long, is not to be conceived or described. Few indeed 
 are ever able to withstand the fatal effects of it. The 
 surgeon, upon going between decks in the morning, fre- 
 quently finds several of the slaves dead, and, among the 
 men, sometimes a dead and a living negro fastened by 
 their irons together." 
 
 He then states that surgeons are driven to engage in 
 the " Guinea Trade" by the confined state of their finan- 
 ces ; and that at most the only way in which a surgeon 
 can render himself useful is by seeing that the food is 
 properly cooked and distributed to the slaves : " when 
 once the fever and dysentery get to any height at sea, 
 a cure is scarcely ever effected." " One-half, some- 
 times two-thirds, and even beyond that, have been 
 known to perish. Before we left Bonny River, no less 
 than fifteen died of fevers and dysenteries, occasioned 
 by their confinement."* Falconbridge also told the 
 Committee of 1790, that, " in stowing the slaves, they 
 wedge them in, so that they had not as much room as 
 a man in his coffin ; that, when going from one side of 
 their rooms to the other, he always took off his shoes, 
 but could not avoid pinching them, and that he had the 
 marks on his feet where they bit and scratched him ; 
 their confinement in this situation was so injurious, that 
 he has known them to go down apparently in good 
 health at night, and found dead in the morning." 
 
 Any comment on the statement of Falconbridge must 
 be superfluous ; he had been a surgeon in slave-ships, 
 he was a respectable witness before the Committee of 
 Inquiry in 1790, and gave the substance of this state- 
 ment in evidence. And it ought to be borne in mind 
 that he was an eye-witness of the scenes which he has 
 described. His evidence is the more valuable, when it 
 is considered that we have long been debarred from 
 
 * Falconbridge, p. 19, &c. 
 
MORTALITY MIDDLE PASSAGE. 93 
 
 testimony equally credible and direct ; as, since 1807, 
 Britain has taken no part in the slave-traffic : and it has 
 been the policy of the foreign nations who have conti- 
 nued the trade to conceal, as far as they could, the hor- 
 rors and miseries which are its attendants. 
 
 Mr. Granville Sharpe (the zealous advocate of the 
 negro) brought forward a case which aroused public 
 attention to the horrors of this passage. In his Me- 
 moirs we have the following account taken from his 
 private memoranda : 
 
 "March 19, 1783. Gustavus Vasa called on me 
 with an account of 130 negroes being thrown alive into 
 the sea, from on board an English slave-ship. 
 
 " The circumstances of this case could not fail to 
 excite a deep interest. The master of a slave-ship, 
 trading from Africa to Jamaica, and having 440 slaves 
 on board, had thought fit, on a pretext that he might be 
 distressed on his voyage for want of water, to lessen 
 the consumption of it in the vessel by throwing over- 
 board 132 of the most sickly among the slaves. On 
 his return to England, the owners of the ship claimed 
 from the insurers the full value of those drowned slaves, 
 on the ground that there was an absolute necessity for 
 throwing them into the sea, in order to save the re- 
 maining crew, and the ship itself. The underwriters 
 contested the existence of the alleged necessity ; or, if 
 it had existed, attributed it to the ignorance and im- 
 proper conduct of the master of the vessel. This 
 contest of pecuniary interest brought to light a scene of 
 horrid brutality which had been acted during the exe- 
 cution of a detestable plot. From the trial, it appeared 
 that the ship Zoncr, Luke Collingwood, master, sailed 
 from the island of St. Thomas, on the coast of Africa, 
 September 6, 1781, with 440 slaves and fourteen whites 
 on board, for Jamaica, and that in the November fol- 
 lowing, she fell in with that island ; but, instead of 
 proceeding to some port, the master, mistaking, as he 
 
94 VHE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 alleges, Jamaica for Hispaniola, run her to leeward. 
 Sickness and mortality had by this time taken place on 
 board the crowded vessel ; so that, between the time of 
 leaving the coast of Africa, and the 29th of November, 
 sixty slaves, and seven white people, had died, and a 
 great number of the surviving slaves were then sick 
 and not likely to live. On that day the master of the 
 ship called together a few of the officers, and stated to 
 them that, if the sick slaves died a natural death, the 
 loss would fall on the owners of the ship ; but, if they 
 were thrown alive into the sea on any sufficient pre- 
 text of necessity for the safety of the ship, it would be 
 the loss of the underwriters, alleging, at the same time, 
 that it would be less cruel to throw sick wretches into 
 the sea, than to suffer them them to linger out a few 
 days under the disorder with which they were afflicted. 
 
 " To this inhuman proposal the mate, James Kelsel, 
 at first objected ; but Collingwood at length prevailed 
 on the crew to listen to it. He then chose out from the 
 cargo 132 slaves, and brought them on deck, all, or 
 most of whom were sickly, and not likely to recover, 
 and he ordered the crew by turns to throw them into 
 the sea. ' A parcel' of them were accordingly thrown 
 overboard, and on counting over the remainder the 
 next morning, it appeared that the number so drowned 
 had been fifty-four. He then ordered another parcel 
 to be thrown over, which, on a second counting, on 
 the succeeding day, was proved to have amounted to 
 forty-two. 
 
 " On the third day the remaining thirty-six were 
 brought on deck, and, as these now resisted the cruel 
 purpose of their masters, the arms of twenty-six were 
 fettered with irons, and the savage crew proceeded with 
 the diabolical work, casting them down to join their 
 comrades of the former days. Outraged misery could 
 endure no longer ; the ten last victims sprang disdain* 
 fully from the grasp of their tyrants, defied their power, 
 
MORTALITY MIDDLE PASSAGE. 95 
 
 and leaping into the sea, felt a momentary triumph in 
 the embrace of death."* 
 
 The evidence taken before the Parliamentary Com- 
 mittees of 1790 and 1791, abounds with similar cases 
 of enormity. I should be entitled, if it were neces- 
 sary to quote every one of them, because the middle 
 passage, at that time, when the traffic was legal, was 
 less horrible than now, when it is contraband. But I 
 have limited myself to two extracts; the one, because 
 it is the narrative of a surgeon, f a class of officers now 
 scarcely to be met with in a slave-ship, and because it 
 gives, in a brief and continuous narrative, the chief 
 features of the voyage across the Atlantic ; the other, 
 because every fact was proved in a court of justice. 
 
 Such were some of the cruelties of the middle pas- 
 sage towards the end of the last century ; and it might 
 have been expected, that since that time, some improve- 
 ment should have taken place ; but it is not so : the 
 treatment of slaves by the British, subsequent to the 
 Slave Regulation Act, and down to 1808, was mildness 
 itself, when compared with the miseries consequent on 
 the trade, and the system which has been pursued in 
 the vain attempt to put it down, since that period to the 
 present time. 
 
 Mr. Wilberforce, in his letter to his constituents in 
 1807, observes, " Many of the sufferings of these 
 wretched beings are of a sort for which no legislative 
 regulations can provide a remedy. Several of them, 
 indeed, arise necessarily out of their peculiar circum- 
 stances, as connected with their condition on ship- 
 board. It is necessary to the safety of the vessel to 
 secure the men by chains and fetters. It is necessary 
 
 * " Memoirs of Granville Sharp," edited by Prince Hoare. Lon- 
 don, 1820, pp. 236-258. 
 
 j- Captain Cook, from whose communication to me I have 
 already given extracts, narrating some of the cruelties of the middle 
 passage, says, " With all this probability, or rather certainty, of 
 disease, I never knew but one slaver that carried a surgeon." 
 
96 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 to confine them below during the night, and in very 
 stormy weather during the day also. Often it happens 
 that with the numbers still allowed to be taken, espe- 
 cially when some of those epidemic diseases prevail, 
 which, though less frequent than formerly, will yet oc- 
 casionally happen ; and when men of different countries 
 and languages, or of opposite tempers, are linked toge- 
 ther, that such scenes take place as are too nauseous 
 for description. Still in rough weather their limbs 
 must be excoriated by lying on the boards ; still they 
 will often be wounded by the fetters ; still food and ex- 
 ercise will be deemed necessary to present the animal in 
 good condition at the place of sale; still some of them will 
 loathe their food, and be averse to exercise, from the 
 joint effect, perhaps of sea-sickness and mental uneasi- 
 ness ; and still, while in this state, they will probably 
 be charged with sulkiness ; and eating, and dancing in 
 their fetters, will be enforced by stripes; still, the high 
 netting will be necessary, that standing precaution of 
 an African ship against acts of suicide; but more than 
 all, still must the diseases of the mind remain entire, 
 nay, they may, perhaps, increase in force, from the 
 attention being less called off by the urgency of bodily 
 suffering; the anguish of husbands torn from their 
 wives, — wives from their husbands, and parents from 
 their children ; the pangs arising from the considera- 
 tion that they are separated for ever from their country, 
 their friends, their relations and connexions, remain the 
 same."* 
 
 Such is the statement of Wilberforce as to the middle 
 passage in its mildest form. This truly great man had 
 the satisfaction shortly afterwards to witness the aboli- 
 tion of the traffic on the part of Eritain, — a triumph on 
 the side of humanity, which his unceasing and strenuous 
 efforts were mainly instrumental in obtaining. 
 
 Since 1808, the English Government has, with vari- 
 
 * Wilberforce's Letter, p. 99, &c. 
 
MORTALITY MIDDLE PASSAGE. 97 
 
 ous success, been indefatigably engaged in endeavoring 
 to procure the co-operation of foreign powers for the 
 suppression of the Slave Trade. In virtue of the trea- 
 ties which have been entered into, many vessels engaged 
 in the traffic have been captured ; and much information 
 has been obtained, which has been regularly laid before 
 Parliament. A few of the cases which have been de- 
 tailed, will now be noticed, for the purpose of ascertain- 
 ing whether the miseries which have been narrated have 
 ceased to exist ; or whether they do not now exist in a 
 more intense degree than at any former period. 
 
 The first case I notice is that of the Spanish brig 
 Carlos, captured in 1614. In this vessel of 200 tons, 
 512 negioes had been put on beard (nearly 160 more 
 than the complement allowed on the proportion of five 
 slaves to three tons.) The captor reported that "they 
 were so miserably fed, clothed, &c, that any idea of 
 the horrors of the Slave Trade would fall short of what 
 I saw. Eighty were thrown overboard before we cap- 
 tured her. In many instances I saw the bones coming 
 through the skin from starvation."* 
 
 In the same year (1814) the schooner Aglae, of 40 
 tons, was captured with a cargo of 152 negroes (nearly 
 four to each ton.) " The only care seemed to have 
 been to pack them as close as possible, and tarpaulin 
 was placed over tarpaulin, in order to give the vessel 
 the appearance of being laden with a well-stowed cargo 
 of cotton and rice."| 
 
 In 1815 a lieutenant of the navy thus describes the 
 state of a Portuguese slaver, the St. Joachim: he says, 
 M That within twenty-two days after the vessel had left 
 Mosambique, thirteen of the slaves had died ; that be- 
 tween the capture and their arrival at Simon's Bay, the 
 survivors of them were all sickly and weak, and nine- 
 ty-two of them afflicted with the flux ; that the slaves 
 
 * African Institution Report, 1815, p. 17. 
 t lb., Appendix, p. 86. 
 
 9 
 
98 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 were all stowed together, perfectly naked, and nothing 
 but rough, unplaned planks to crouch down upon, in a 
 hold situated over their water and provisions, the place 
 being little more than two feet in height, and the space 
 allowed for each slave so small, that it was impossible 
 for them to avoid touching and pressing upon those 
 immediately surrounding. The greater part of them 
 were fastened, some three together, by one leg, each in 
 heavy iron shackles, a very large proportion of them 
 having the flux. Thus they were compelled," &c. (here 
 a scene of disgusting wretchedness is described.) " The 
 pilot being asked by Captain Baker how many he sup- 
 posed would have reached their destination, replied, 
 ' about half the number that were embarked.' "* 
 
 We have next the case of the Rodeur, as stated in a 
 periodical work, devoted to medical subjects, and pub- 
 lished at Paris. This vessel, it appears, was of 200 
 tons' burden. She took on board a cargo of 160 ne- 
 groes, and after having been fifteen days on her voyage, 
 it was remarked that the slaves had contracted a con- 
 siderable redness of the eyes, which spread with singu- 
 lar rapidity. At this time they were limited to eight 
 ounces of water a day, for each person, which quantity 
 was afterwards reduced to the half of a wine-glass. By 
 the advice of the surgeon, the slaves who were in the 
 hold were brought upon deck for the advantage of fresh 
 air ; but it became necessary to abandon this expedient, 
 as many of them who were affected with nostalgia threw 
 themselves into the sea, locked in each other's arms. 
 The ophthalmia which had spread so rapidly and fright- 
 fully among the Africans, soon began to infect all on 
 board, and to create alarm for the crew. The danger 
 of infection, and perhaps the cause which produced the 
 disease, Avere increased by a violent dysentery, attri- 
 buted to the use of rain-water. The number of the blind 
 augmented every day. The vessel reached Guadaloupe 
 
 * Afr. Inst. Report, 1818, p. 27. 
 
MORTALITY" MIDDLE PASSAGE. 99 
 
 on June 21, 1519, her crew being in a most deplorable 
 condition. Three days after her arrival, the only man 
 who during the voyage had withstood the influence of 
 the contagion, and whom Providence appeared to have 
 preserved as a guide to his unfortunate companions, was 
 seized with the same malady. Of the negroes, thirty- 
 nine had become perfectly blind, twelve had lost one 
 eye, and fourteen were affected with blemishes more or 
 less considerable. 
 
 This case excited great interest, and several addi- 
 tional circumstances connected with it were given to the 
 public. It was stated that the captain caused several 
 of the negroes who were prevented in the attempt to 
 throw themselves overboard, to be shot and hung, in the 
 hope that the example might deter the rest from a simi- 
 lar conduct. It is further stated, that upwards of thirty 
 of the slaves who became blind were thrown into the 
 sea and drowned, upon the principle that had they been 
 landed at Guadaloupe, no one would have bought them, 
 while by throwing them overboard the expense of main- 
 taining them was avoided, while a ground was laid for 
 a claim on the underwriters by whom the cargo had 
 been insured, and who are said to have allowed the 
 claim, and made good the value of the slaves thus de- 
 stroyed. 
 
 What more need be said in illustration of the extre- 
 mity of suffering induced by the middle passage, as de- 
 monstrated by the case of the Rodeur? But the sup- 
 plement must not be omitted. At the time when only 
 one man could see to steer that vessel, a iarge ship ap- 
 proached, " which appeared to be totally at the mercy 
 of the wind and the waves. The crew of this vessel, 
 hearing the voices of the crew of the Rodeur, cried out 
 most vehemently for help. They told the melancholy 
 tale as they passed along ; that their ship was a Spanish 
 slave-ship, the St. Leon ; and that a contagion had 
 seized the eyes of all on board, so that there was not 
 one individual sailor or slave who could see. But alas ! 
 
100 
 
 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 this pitiable narrative was in vain ; for no help could be 
 given. The St. Leon passed on, and was never more 
 heard of!"* 
 
 In the African Institution Report for 1820, I find the 
 following case stated. Captain Kelly, of H. M. S. ship 
 Pheasant, captured on July 30, 1819, a Portuguese 
 schooner, called the Novo Felicidade, belonging to 
 Princes Island, having on board seventy-one slaves, 
 and a crew, consisting of one master and ten sailors. 
 This vessel measured only eleven tons. She was car- 
 ried by Captain Kelly to Sierra Leone, for adjudication, 
 and his judicial declaration contains the following state- 
 ment : — 
 
 " I do further declare, that the state in which these 
 unfortunate creatures were found is shocking to every 
 principle of humanity ; — seventeen men shackled toge- 
 ther in pairs by the legs, and twenty boys, one on the 
 other, in the main hold, — a space measuring eighteen 
 feet in length, seven feet eight inches main breadth, and 
 one foot eight inches in height ; and under them the 
 yams for their support." 
 
 The appearance of the slaves, when released from 
 their irons, was most distressing ; scarcely any of them 
 could stand on their legs, from cramp and evident 
 starvation. The space allowed for the females, thirty- 
 four in number, was even more contracted than that for 
 the men, measuring only nine feet four inches in length, 
 four feet eight inches main breadth, and two feet seven 
 inches in height ; but not being confined in irons, and 
 perhaps allowed during the day to come on deck, they 
 did not present so distressing an appearance as the 
 men."t 
 
 We have next another instance of the varied cruelties 
 of this part of the subject. La Jeune Estelle, captured 
 by Admiral Collier in 1820, after a chase of some 
 
 * Afr. Inst. Report, 1820, p. 7. f Ibid., p. 11 . 
 
MORTALITY" MIDDLE PASSAGE. 101 
 
 hours, during which several casks were observed to be 
 floating in the sea ; but no person could be spared at 
 the time to examine them. On boarding the Estelle, 
 the captain denied that he had any slaves on board ; 
 but from the very suspicious appearances around, the 
 officer ordered a strict search to be made. An English 
 sailor, on striking a cask, heard a faint voice issue from 
 it, as if of some creature expiring. The cask was im- 
 mediately opened, when two slave girls, about twelve 
 or fourteen years of age, were found packed up in it ; a 
 prisoner on board the captor's ship recognised the girls 
 as two out of fourteen, whom the slaver had carried off 
 from a village on the coast. Admiral Collier, on this, 
 ordered another search to be made, in hopes of disco- 
 vering the other twelve ; but they were nowhere to be 
 found. The painful suspicion then arose that the slaver 
 had packed up the twelve girls in casks, and had thrown 
 them overboard during the chase ; but it was too late 
 to ascertain the truth of this conjecture, as the chase 
 had led the English frigate many leagues to leeward 
 of the place where they had observed casks floating in 
 the sea.* 
 
 Some of the following extracts are also taken from 
 the Reports of the African Institution : — 
 
 A Spanish schooner, the Vicua, when taken posession 
 of, in 1822, had a lighted match hanging over the open 
 magazine hatch. The match had been placed there by 
 the crew before they escaped. It was seen by one of 
 the British seamen, who boldly put his hat under the 
 burning wick, and removed it. The magazine contain- 
 ed a large quantity of powder. One spark would have 
 blown up 325 unfortunate victims, lying in irons in the 
 hold. These monsters in iniquity expressed their deep 
 regret, after the action, that their diabolical plan had fail- 
 ed. Thumbscrews were also found in this vessel. 
 From confinement and suffering the slaves often injured 
 
 * Afr. Inst. Report, 1821, p. 15. 
 9* 
 
102 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 themselves by beating, and vented their grief upon such 
 as were next them, by biting and tearing their flesh.* 
 
 Les Deux Soeurs was of forty-one tons; the Eleanor 
 of about sixty ; the first had crammed 132 negroes, the 
 last 135, into a space capable of containing about thirty, 
 at full length.f 
 
 In the Report of 1823, we have an account of a gal- 
 lant feat achieved by the boats of a man-of-war, com- 
 manded by Lieutenant Mildmay, on the 15th of April, 
 1822. The action took place in the river Bonny. On 
 the one side were six sail of slavers, three of which open- 
 ed a heavy fire upon " the English boats as they ad- 
 vanced. When the latter were near enough for their 
 shots to take effect, the firing was returned. They ad- 
 vanced, and in a short time took posession of all the 
 vessels. 
 
 " Many of the slaves jumped overboard during the 
 engagement, and were devoured by the sharks. On 
 board the Yeanam, the slaves suffered much ; four were 
 killed, and ten wounded. Of the wounded, three were 
 females ; one girl, of about ten years old, lost both her 
 legs, another her right arm, and a third was shot in the 
 side. Even after the vessel had been surrendered, a 
 number of the Spanish sailors skulked below, and arm- 
 ing the slaves with muskets, made them fire upwards 
 on the British. On board this ship Lieutenant Mildmay 
 observed a slave girl, about twelve or thirteen years of 
 age, in irons, to which was fastened a thick iron chain, 
 ten feet in length, that was dragged along as she 
 moved.":}: 
 
 Commodore Bullen writes, of date September 5, 1825. 
 that the Brazen, last October, overtook L'Eclair. " She 
 belongs to Nantz. The master stated that he had lost 
 a third of his cargo in embarking them. She measured 
 three feet one inch between decks ; the men chained ; 
 many of them unable to sit upright. "§ 
 
 * Afr. Inst. Report, 1823, p. 29. f lb. , 1826, p. 55. 
 
 t Ibid, 1823, p. 28. § Ibid, 1826, p. 60. 
 
MORTALITY MIDDLE PASSAGE. 103 
 
 A resident at Freetown thus writes in the Sierra 
 Leone Gazette of the 11th of December, 1823: — " Hav- 
 ing gone off to the slave-vessels lately sent into this 
 harbor, I was struck by the appearance of some very 
 fierce dogs, of the bloodhound species, natives of Brazil, 
 and, on inquiry, found that they had been taken on 
 board for the purpose of assisting their inhuman masters 
 in coercing the unfortunate victims of their lawless cu- 
 pidity. They had been trained, it appears, to sit watch 
 over the hatches during the night, or whenever the 
 wretched beings were confined below, and thus effect- 
 ually precluded them from coming up. This abomina. 
 ble system is, I understand, pretty generally practised 
 on board the slavers from Bahia and Cuba. 
 
 In the Sierra Leone Advertiser of November 20, 
 1324, we have some striking instances of the frauds 
 practised by the Portuguese slavers in carrying on their 
 trade. Of three vessels captured, it appeared that the 
 Diana had a royal license to carry 300 slaves, as being 
 a vessel of 120 tons; and this in accordance with the 
 law allowing five slaves to every two tons (equal to 
 three tons British ;) but in fact she admeasured only 
 sixty-six tons, which would give a rate of five slaves to 
 one ton. She had shipped at Badagry, for Brazil, 156 
 slaves, besides her crew, eighteen in number. 
 
 The Two Brazilian Friends, licensed to carry 365 
 slaves, as being of 146. tons, proved to be of only 95 
 tons ; and the platform for the men only two feet six 
 inches in height ; yet she had on board 260 slaves, be- 
 sides a crew of eighteen persons. 
 
 The Aviso, asserted to be 231, found to be only 165 
 tons ; 465 slaves were stowed in this vessel, with a crew 
 thirty-three in number. 
 
 A great many deaths had occurred in these vessels, 
 and the survivors were in a very emaciated state.* 
 
 * " ' Of all the vessels I was on board of/ says Captain Wool- 
 combe, • this (the Diana) was in the most deplorable condition ; the 
 
104 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 The Paris petition of — February, 1825, states, 
 "That it is established, by authentic documents, that 
 the slave captains throw into the sea, every year, about 
 3000 negroes, men, women, and children ; of whom 
 more than half are thus sacrificed, whilst yet alive, 
 either to escape from the visits of cruisers, or because, 
 worn down by their sufferings, they could not be sold 
 to advantage."* 
 
 In the Appendix (G) to the Report of the African 
 Institution for 1827, we have the case of the schooner 
 L'Espoir, as narrated by General Milius, governor of 
 Bourbon. " In the month of September, 1826, the 
 schooner left the ^Mauritius under English colors, shap- 
 ing its course towards the coasts of Madagascar. The 
 Sieur Lemoine was the master ; he fell in with a Por- 
 tuguese vessel laden with negroes and gold-dust. An 
 eagerness and thirst of gain seized upon his soul ; he 
 ran alongside of the Portuguese vessel, and immediately 
 killed the mate by a musket-shot; having boarded her, 
 he soon obtained possession of the vessel attacked, and 
 
 stench from the accumulation of dirt, joined to that of so many 
 human beings packed together in a small space (the men all ironed 
 in pairs,) was intolerable. To add 'to the scene of misery, the 
 small-pox had broken out among them.' 
 
 "Commodore Bullen, who visited the Two Brazilian Friends, 
 says, ' Its filthy and horrid state beggars all description. Many fe- 
 males were far advanced in pregnancy, and several had infants from 
 four to twelve months of age ; all were crowded together in one 
 mass of living corruption ; and yet this vessel had not her prescribed 
 complement by nearly 100.' 
 
 "Commodore Bullen found the Aviso in a most crowded and 
 wretched condition, although she had on board 120 less than direct- 
 ed in her passport. Such were the filth and crowd, that not one- 
 half could have reached the Brazils alive. At the date of her capture 
 she had scarcely 20 days' provisions for the slaves, and less water. 
 ' How they intended to subsist them till their arrival at Bahia,' says 
 the Captain, 'is to me a problem, unless they could have calculated 
 on a great decrease from death.' "f 
 
 * Afr. Inst. Report for 1826, pp. 62, 63. 
 
 t Afr. Inst. Report for 1825, pp. 27, 28. 
 
MORTALITY rilDDLE PASSAGE. 105 
 
 his first questions were addressed to a Portuguese co- 
 lonel, aged fifty, of whom he inquired where the money 
 and gold-dust were deposited. After this short interro- 
 gatory, Lemoine purposely stepped aside, and a man 
 named Reineur, who was behind him, with a pistol blew 
 out the unfortunate colonel's brains. The master of 
 the captured vessel, alarmed by the rapid succession of 
 these massacres, threw himself overboard, in order to 
 escape a more immediate death. Vain hope ! the fury 
 of Lemoine and his accomplices was not yet allayed. 
 They pursued him in a boat, and, having soon over- 
 taken him, they cut him on the head with a sabre. Tn3 
 unfortunate man, feeling himself wounded, caught hold, 
 in order to support himself, of the boat in which his 
 murderers were, who, profiting by this last effort of de- 
 spair, had the dastard cruelty to run a sword into his 
 throat, the point of which camo out at his side : the 
 body disappeared, and they returned on board, fatigued 
 but not satiated with murder. They shut up in the hold 
 the remaining Portuguese sailors, and, after taking off 
 the rich cargo, they scuttled the ship, and sunk bef 
 with the crew they had thus shut up. 
 
 " This is one of many proofs of the piratical habits 
 and cruelty produced by the Slave Trade."* 
 
 In the evidence before the Committee on Sierra 
 Leone, &c, in 1830, we find it stated, by Lieutenant 
 Tringham, that, about 1825, the vessel in which he 
 sailed captured a slave-schooner of seventy or eighty 
 tons, bound for Brazil, with 230 slaves on board. 
 There were about 100 on deck and 180 below. They 
 were so crowded on deck, that (as the witness says) 
 " We were not able to work the vessel without treading 
 on them." As to their provisions, he remarked that the 
 " jerked beef" was very salt, and that there was always 
 a scarcity of water : " the allowance was about a pint 
 
 * Afr. Inst. Report, 1827. App. G. ; p. 144. 
 
106 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 a-day ; they had two meals in the day, and about half 
 a pint at each meal was their full allowance."* 
 
 In the despatches of Sir Charles MacCarthy, dated 
 the 3d of August, 1822, I find the case of the San Jose 
 Hallaxa, a schooner under seven tons burden, which 
 was captured, by H. JVI. B. Thistle, in the river Cala- 
 bar ; and it appears, by the acknowledgment of the 
 master, that he shipped at Duke Ephraim's Town, on 
 that river, thirty slaves ; that he had gone to sea with 
 that number on board, intending to proceed to Princes 
 Island, but, not having been able to make that port, he 
 had returned to Calabar, having his provisions and 
 water nearly expended, after having been at sea five or 
 six weeks. 
 
 During this voyage, ten unfortunate objects of his 
 avarice, not being able to procure sufficient nourishment 
 to satisfy the cravings of nature, had been released from 
 further sufferings by starvation ! One poor female, in 
 the absence of food, had existed on salt water until her 
 faculties were destroyed, and she became raving mad ; 
 but even the deplorable and affecting state of insanity 
 did not shield her from the brutal outrage of her op- 
 pressors, who, with a view of stifling her cries by fre- 
 quent repetition of the lash, literally flogged her to 
 death. The owner of this vessel, and the purchaser of 
 these human beings, is a woman ! — Donna Maria de 
 Cruz, daughter of the notorious Gomez, formerly go- 
 vernor of Princes Island, and now holding the appoint- 
 ment of fiscal, and member of council. This woman is 
 known to the Mixed Commission Court, having been 
 under their cognizance some time since as proprietor of 
 the "Conceigao," condemned by the British and Portu- 
 guese judges, t 
 
 Sir John Barrow, in his able observations on the 
 Slave Trade in 1826, says : — " We have also discover- 
 
 * Pari. Report. Sierra Leone, &c, 1830, p. S3. 
 f Pari. Paper, 11th July, 1823, p. 9. 
 
MORTALITY MIDDLE PASSAGE. 107 
 
 ed among the papers before us (those laid before Par- 
 liament,) that the amiable Donna Maria de Cruz, 
 daughter of the governor of Princes Island, of whom 
 we had occasion once before to make honorable men- 
 tion, is still engaged in carrying on the traffic, though 
 in a small way. The Victor sloop-of-war fell in with 
 and captured a schooner-boat belonging to this paragon 
 of her sex, called the Maria Pequina. Her burden was 
 five tons. She had taken on board in the river Gam- 
 boon, besides her crew, water, and provisions, twenty- 
 three slaves, six of whom had already died; they were 
 stowed in a space between the water-casks and the deck, 
 of eighteen inches in height ; and Lieutenant Scott re- 
 ports that, when he seized her, the remaining negroes 
 were in a state of actual starvation."* 
 
 Commodore Bullen, in his despatch of 26th Novem- 
 ber, 1826, describing the capture of Le Daniel, says, 
 " in consequence of the heavy rain which commenced 
 shortly after I brought him to, the slaves quarrelled 
 among themselves regarding the right of precedence of 
 those below to get on deck for fresh air, and those who 
 had already the possession of it, when, shocking to re- 
 late, 19 fell victims. "f The Commissioners at Havana, 
 in their despatch of the 28th August, 1828, mention the 
 case of the " Intrepido," which, out of a cargo of 343, 
 lost 190 in her passage, and 18 after capture, making a 
 total of 208. They attribute a certain portion of this 
 mortality to two insurrections of the negroes on board, 
 but principally to the horrible confinement of so great a 
 number on board so small a vessel. f 
 
 " The Invincible had on board a cargo of 440 ne- 
 groes, a number, it seems, sixty-three short of her full 
 complement ; but these so crowded together that it be- 
 came absolutely impossible to separate the sick from 
 the healthy ; and dysentery, ophthalmia, and scurvy 
 
 * Edinburgh Review, No 44, 1826. 
 
 f Class A, 1829, p. 138. * Ik, p. 153. 
 
108 THE SLAVE TEADE. 
 
 breaking out among them, the provisions and water 
 being of the worst kind, and the filth and stench beyond 
 all description, 186 of the number had perished in less 
 than sixty days."* 
 
 The Maria, 133 Spanish tons burden, captured by 
 H. M. B. Plumper, 26th December, 1630, was found to 
 contain 545 persons, including the crew, — thus allow- 
 ing only the unprecedented small space of one ton for 
 the accommodation of four persons ; the consequence 
 was, that though she was out only eleven days, the 
 small-pox, dysentery, and other diseases had broken out 
 with great virulence. f 
 
 Captain Wauchope, R. N., late of the Thalia, has 
 stated to me, that while on service with the preventive 
 squadron in 1828, H. M. S. Medina, in which he sailed, 
 captured the Spanish brig El Juan, with 407 slaves on 
 board. It appeared that, owing to a press of sail during 
 the chase, the El Juan had heeled so much as to alarm 
 the negroes, who made a rush to the grating. The 
 crew thought they were attempting to rise, and getting 
 out their arms, they fired upon the wretched slaves 
 through the grating, till all was quiet in the hold. 
 When Captain Cassel went on board, the negroes were 
 brought up, one living and one dead shackled together ; 
 " it was an awful scene of carnage and blood; one mass 
 of human gore : Captain Cassel said he never saw any- 
 thing so horrible in his life." 
 
 Dr. Walsh, in his " Notices of Brazil," gives a most 
 animated picture of the state of a Spanish slaver, de- 
 tained by the vessel of war, in which he returned from 
 Brazil, in May, 1829. He says, " When we mounted 
 her decks we found her full of slaves ; she had taken 
 on board 562, and had been out seventeen days, during 
 which she lost fifty-five. The slaves were all enclosed 
 under grated hatchways between decks. The space 
 
 » Afr. Inst. Report, 1827, pp. 4, 5. 
 f Class A. 1832, p. 13. 
 
MORTALITY MIDDLE PASSAGE. 109 
 
 was so low that they sat between each other's legs, and 
 stowed so close together that there was no possibility of 
 their lying down, or at all changing their position by 
 night or day. As they belonged to, and were shipped 
 on account of different individuals, they were all brand- 
 ed like sheep, with the owners' marks of different forms. 
 These were impressed under their breasts, or on their 
 arms ; and, as the mate informed me with perfect indif- 
 ference, ' burnt with the red-hot iron.' " 
 
 After many other particulars, the statement of which 
 my limits will not admit, Dr. Walsh continues : " The 
 poor beings were all turned up together. They came 
 swarming up like bees from the aperture of a hive, till 
 the whole deck was crowded to suffocation from stem 
 to stern. On looking into the places where they had 
 been crammed, there were found some children next 
 the sides of the ship. The little creatures seemed indif- 
 ferent as to life or death, and when they were carried 
 on deck, many of them could not stand. Some water 
 was brought ; it was then that the extent of their suffer- 
 ings was exposed in a fearful manner. They all rushed 
 like maniacs towards it. No entreaties, or threats, or 
 blows could restrain them ; they shrieked and struggled 
 and fought with one another for a drop of the precious 
 liquid, as if they grew rabid at the sight of it. There 
 is nothing which slaves during the middle passage suffer 
 from so much, as want of water. It is sometimes usual 
 to take out casks filled with sea-water as ballast, and 
 when the slaves are received on board, to start the 
 casks, and refill them with fresh. On one occasion a 
 ship from Bahia neglected to change the contents of the 
 casks, and on the mid-passage found, to their horror, 
 that they were filled with nothing but salt-water. All 
 the slaves on board perished ! We could judge of the 
 extent of their sufferings, from the sight we now saw. 
 When the poor creatures were ordered down again, 
 several of them came and pressed their heads against 
 our knees with looks of the greatest anguish, at the 
 
 10 
 
110 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 prospect of returning to the horrid place of suffering 
 below. It was not surprising that they had lost fifty- 
 five, in the space of seventeen days. Indeed, many of 
 the survivors were seen lying about the decks in the 
 last stage of emaciation, and in a state of filth and 
 misery not to be looked at." 
 
 " While expressing my horror at what I saw, and 
 exclaiming against the state of this vessel, I was in- 
 formed by my friends, who had passed so long a time 
 on the coast of Africa, and visited so many ships, that 
 this was one of the best they had seen. The height 
 sometimes between decks was only eighteen inches, so 
 that the unfortunate beings could not turn round, or 
 even on their sides, the elevation being less than the 
 breadth of their shoulders ; and here they are usually 
 chained to the decks by the neck and legs. After 
 much deliberation, this wretched vessel was allowed to 
 proceed on her voyage." 
 
 " It was dark when we separated ; and the last part- 
 ing sounds we heard from the unhallowed ship were the 
 cries and shrieks of the slaves, suffering under some 
 bodily infliction."* 
 
 In the same year, 1829, the Commissioners at Ha- 
 vana reported, that " The Fama de Cadiz came into 
 port, having previously landed 300 slaves at Santa 
 Cruz. It is said that this notorious slave-trader and 
 pirate had plundered other slave-vessels on the coast of 
 Africa of about 980 slaves, and had scarcely sailed for 
 Cuba, when the small-pox and other contagious dis- 
 eases broke out, which reduced the crew of 157 to 66, 
 and her slaves to about 300 ; of whom the greatest part 
 are in so wretched a state that her owners have been 
 selling them as low as 100 dollars." 
 
 They also report the arrival of the schooner Con- 
 stantia in ballast, after having landed seventy slaves on 
 the coast. She is said to have left Africa with 438 ne- 
 
 * Walsh's Notices of Brazil. London, 1830. Vol. ii., p. 475, &c. 
 
MORTALITY MIDDLE PASSAGE. Ill 
 
 groes, who have been reduced by the small-pox to the 
 above small number. And they add, "The mortality 
 on board the slave-vessels this year has been truly 
 shocking."* 
 
 In 1829 we have the case of the Midas. This vessel 
 left the Bonny with a cargo of 560 slaves, and had only 
 400 on board at the time of detention. Of these, after 
 the surrender, about thirty threw themselves into the 
 sea. Before she arrived at Havana, nine other negroes 
 had thrown themselves overboard, sixty-nine had died 
 of the small-pox and other diseases. After their arrival 
 ten more died. The remainder, 282, were then in a 
 most dreadful state; so ill and so emaciated, that "It 
 has hitherto been impossible," says the medical officer, 
 " to make out the descriptions of their persons and 
 marks that are inserted in their certificates of eman- 
 cipation. "f 
 
 In 1831, Captain Hamilton thus writes to the Com- 
 missioners : — " On our getting into Bahia, on the after- 
 noon of the same day, I sent two officers on board the Des- 
 timida to search. They, after some time, and with much 
 difficulty, discovered fifty male negro slaves concealed 
 in the bottom of the vessel.":}: " Five young men were 
 extricated from one water-butt ; but the greater part had 
 been stowed or forced into the small or close spaces 
 between the water-casks under the false decks. "§ 
 
 Captain Hayes, R. N., mentions the case of a slaver, 
 having a large cargo of human beings, chained to- 
 gether : " The master of the vessel, with more huma- 
 nity than his fellows, permitted some of them to come 
 on deck (but still chained together) for the benefit of the 
 air, when they immediately commenced jumping over- 
 board, hand in hand, and drowning in couples." He 
 explains the cause of this circumstance by saying, 
 " they were just brought from a situation between 
 
 * Class A, 1329, p. 156. f Ibid., p. 148. 
 
 i Ibid., 1831, p. 127. § Class B, 1831, p. 117. 
 
112 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 decks, and to which they knew they must return, where 
 the scalding perspiration was running from one to the 
 other, covered also with their own filth, and where it is 
 no uncommon occurrence for women to be bringing 
 forth children, and men dying by their side, with, full 
 in their view, living and dead bodies chained together, 
 and the living, in addition to all their other torments, 
 laboring under the most famishing thirst, (being in very 
 few instances allowed more than a pint of water a-day.) 
 He goes on to say, " I have now an officer on board 
 the * Dryad,' who, on examining one of these slave- 
 vessels, found not only living men chained to dead 
 bodies, but the latter in a putrid state ; and we have 
 now a case which, if true, is too horrible and disgusting 
 to be described."* 
 
 In the same year (1831) the Black Joke and Fair 
 Rosamond fell in with the Rapido and Regulo two slave 
 vessels off the Bonny River. On perceiving the cruisers, 
 they attempted to regain the port, and pitched overboard 
 upwards of 500 human beings chained together before 
 they were captured. From the abundance of sharks in 
 the river their track was literally a blood stained one."f 
 
 The master of an English merchant-vessel, who hap- 
 pened to be in the Bonny, at the time, witnessed the 
 whole affair. He lately told me, that " The chase was 
 so vigorous, and the slavers so anxious to escape, that 
 the four vessels came flying into the creek, nearly all 
 together, and ran aground in the mud, where the slavers 
 threw overboard what remained of the negroes, very few 
 of whom, from their being shackled together, reached 
 the shore ; and that he and his crew helped to get the 
 vessels again afloat, which was accomplished with much 
 difficulty. He afterwards met the captain of one of the 
 slavers, who justified what he had done as an act which 
 
 ■* Class B, 1831, p. 170. 
 t Laird, vol. ii. p. 372. 
 
MORTALITY MIDDLE PASSAGE. 113 
 
 necessity compelled him to adopt, for the preservation 
 of his property." 
 
 Captain Ramsay, who at the time commanded the 
 Black Joke, has stated to me, that during the chase he 
 and his men distinctly saw the sharks tearing the bodies 
 of the negroes who were thrown overboard by the sla- 
 vers; and that had it not been for the fortunate rescue 
 of two of the slaves of the Rapido, who had been flung 
 into the sea shackled together, and who were brought up 
 from under water by a boat-hook, that vessel would 
 have escaped condemnation, as all her slaves had been 
 thrown overboard or landed in canoes, before they came 
 up with her.* 
 
 Captain Wauchope has informed me, that on the voy- 
 age out to Africa, about three years ago, his vessel cap- 
 tured a Portuguese slaver, and that when the prize 
 officer went on board, the Portuguese captain asked him, 
 if no slaves had been on board, could he have been 
 taken? The officer answered, ** No'.'' " Then," said 
 the Portuguese, " if I had known it, T would have thrown 
 every one overboard." 
 
 In a letter which I received from Captain Wauchope, 
 of date 13th August, 1333, he says, " In February, 
 1836, I was informed by Commander Puget, that the 
 Spanish slaver, Argu?, three months before this date, 
 was chased by the Charybdis, Lieutenant Mercer ; that 
 during the chase ninety-seven slaves had been thrown 
 overboard, and that a Spanish captain he had captured, 
 declared he would never hesitate to throw the slaves 
 overboard, to prevent being taken/' 
 
 Were it not that the evidence on these cases is un- 
 exceptionable, we could not believe that there did exist 
 human beings capable of uttering such sentiments, or of 
 performing such infamous deeds. 
 
 Captain Wauchope in the same letter informs me, 
 that on the 18th September, 1836, the Thalia captured 
 
 * See an account of this case in the United Service Journal for 
 1S33, part i., p. 505, &c. 
 
 10* 
 
114 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 the Portuguese brig Felix, 590 slaves on board. " Af- 
 ter capture," he says, "I went on board, and such a 
 scene of horror it is not easy to describe ; the long-boat 
 on the booms, and the deck aft, were crowded with 
 little children, sickly, poor little unhappy things, some 
 of them rather pretty, and some much marked and tat- 
 tooed ; much pains must have been taken by their mise- 
 rable parents to ornament and beautify them. 
 
 " The women lay between decks aft, much crowded, 
 and perfectly naked ; they were not barred down, the 
 hatchway, a small one, being off; but the place for the 
 men was too horrible, the wretches, chained two and 
 two, gasping and striving to get at the bars of the 
 hatchways, and such a steam and stench as to make it 
 intolerable even to look down. It requires much cau- 
 tion at first, in allowing them to go on deck, as it is a 
 common practice for them to jump overboard to get quit 
 of their misery. 
 
 " The slave-deck was not more than three feet six 
 in height, and the human beings stowed, or rather 
 crushed as close as possible ; many appeared very 
 sickly. There was no way of getting into the slave- 
 room but by the hatchway. I was told, when they 
 were all on deck to be counted, that it was impossible 
 for any of our people to go into the slave-room for a 
 single minute, so intolerable was the stench. The color 
 of these poor creatures was of a dark squalid yellow, 
 so different from the fine glossy black of our liberated 
 Africans and Kroomen. I was shown a man much bit 
 and bruised ; it was done in a struggle at the gratings 
 of their hatchways for a mouthful of fresh air." 
 
 It is fearful to contemplate the increase, of late years, 
 in the mortality during the middle passage. The chief 
 reason, as it appears, is well given by Laird in his jour- 
 nal of the recent expedition to the Niger. He says : — 
 " Instead of the large and commodious vessels which it 
 would be the interest of the slave-trader to employ, we 
 have, by our interference, forced him to use a class of 
 
MORTALITY MIDDLE PASSAGE. 115 
 
 vessels, (well known to naval men as American Clip- 
 pers,) of the very worst description that could have 
 been imagined, for the purpose, every quality being 
 sacrificed for speed. In the holds of these vessels the 
 unhappy victims of European cupidity are stowed lite- 
 rally in bulk."* 
 
 It ought also to be kept in view, that there is this 
 material difference betwixt these " clippers" and other 
 merchant-vessels : that while the latter usually carry 
 far more than their registered tonnage would seem to 
 permit, the former invariably exhibit a capacity for a 
 cargo greatly below the tonnage by registration. 
 
 As a proof of the increase in the mortality on the 
 middle passage, I may adduce the evidence of Mr. Jack- 
 son, (who had been a judge in the Mixed Commission 
 Court at Sierra Leone,) before the Committee on Sierra 
 Leone, &c, in 1830. In answer to a question, he said, 
 " I think the sufferings of those poor slaves are greatly 
 aggravated by the course now adopted ; for the trade is 
 now illegal ; and therefore whatever is done, is done 
 clandestinely ; they are packed more like bales of goods 
 on board than human beings, and the general calcula- 
 tion is, that if in three adventures one succeeds, the 
 owners are well paid."f 
 
 Were it not that I feel bound to substantiate my case 
 up to the present time, I would gladly pass over the 
 numberless instances of cruelty and mortality connected 
 with this branch of the subject, which are made known 
 to us by the papers laid before Parliament within the 
 last few years. But I shall notice some of these in- 
 stances, as briefly as can be done, without suppressing 
 the main facts which are established by them. 
 
 The Carolina, captured in 1834, off Wydah.J " This 
 vessel was only seventy-five tons burden, yet she had 
 
 * Laird, vol. ii., p. 369. 
 
 f Sierra Leone Report 1830, p. 55. 
 
 $ Class A, 1834, p. 17. 
 
116 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 350 negroes crammed on board of her, 180 of whom 
 were literally so stowed as to have barely sufficient 
 height to hold themselves up, when in a sitting posture. 
 The poor creatures crowded round their deliverers, 
 with their mouths open and their tongues parched for 
 want of water, presenting a perfect spectacle of human 
 misery." 
 
 The Patacho, reported by the Commissioners at Rio 
 de Janeiro in 1835. This " vessel was in the first in- 
 stance detained only on suspicion, and the capturing 
 party had had possession forty-eight hours, and had 
 made every possible search, as they supposed, before it 
 was discovered that there were any slaves concealed on 
 board. What the state of these wretched beings, to the 
 number of forty-seven, must have been, deprived for so 
 long a time of air and food, and packed in the smallest 
 possible compass, like so many bales of goods, we need 
 not pain your Lordship by describing."* 
 
 In a letter from the Cape of Good Hope, of date 20th 
 January, 1837, we find it stated that her Majesty's brig 
 Dolphin had lately captured the corvette Incomprehen- 
 sible ; and that, on taking possession of her, " the scene 
 presented on board was harrowing in the extreme. 
 One hundred had died from sickness, out of the 800 
 embarked ; another 100 were lying nearly lifeless on 
 her decks, in wretchedness and misery, and all the 
 agony of despair ; the remaining 600 were so cramped 
 from the close manner in which they were packed (like 
 herrings in a barrel,) and the length of time they had 
 been on their voyage, and the cold they had endured in 
 rounding the Cape, in a state of nudity, that it took the 
 utmost exertions of the English sailors, favored by a 
 hot sun, to straighten them."f 
 
 In the Shipping and Mercantile Gazette of 2d June, 
 1838, is the following paragraph : " A letter from the 
 
 * Class A, 1835, p. 286. 
 
 f From a correspondent of the Times newspaper. 
 
MORTALITY MIDDLE PASSAGE. 117 
 
 ' Snake' sloop of war, dated 31st March, 1338, says, 
 1 We have captured a very fine schooner, called the 
 Arogan, off Cape Antonio, having 350 slaves of both 
 sexes, under the age of twenty, and have sent her into 
 the Havana for adjudication. She cleared out from 
 Gallinas, and lost fifty on her passage by death, owing 
 to the crowded manner in which they were packed, re- 
 sembling goods in a draper's shop,' " 
 
 In the parliamentary papers printed last year by the 
 House of Commons, I observe the following cases re- 
 ported : — " The brig Don Manuel de Portugal, from 
 Angola, embarked 600 slaves ; of these seventy-three 
 died on the voyage." 
 
 " Brig Adamastor, from Quilimane, embarked 800 
 slaves ; of these 304 died on the voyage !" 
 
 "Brig Leao, from Quilimane, embarked 855 slaves ; 
 of these 283 died, or were thrown overboard alive, dur- 
 ing the voyage. The small-pox having appeared among 
 the slaves, thirty of them were immediately thrown 
 overboard alive ; afterwards the measles made its ap- 
 pearance, of which 253 died. The remaining slaves, 
 572 in number, were landed on the coast of Brazil at 
 Mozambayo, near to Ilha Grande, but in so miserable a 
 state that the greater part could not walk, but were 
 carried on shore."* 
 
 " The brig Flor de Quilimane, from Quilimane, em- 
 barked 850 slaves ; of these 163 died on the passage, 
 and 697 were landed at Campos in a very sickly 
 state."f 
 
 In a letter from a member of the Society of Friends, 
 dated Havana, July 14th, 1836, and published in the 
 Colonization Herald, Philadelphia, Aug. 15th, 1838, I 
 find the following passage : — " In company with an 
 English naval officer, I made a visit across the bay to 
 several of these slave-vessels. We were permitted to 
 walk over them, but no particular attention was paid to 
 
 * Class B, 1837, p. 53. f Ibid., p. 60. 
 
118 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 us ; on the contrary, we were looked upon with sus- 
 picion, and received short and unsatisfactory answers 
 to our questions in general ; all attempts to enter into 
 conversation with those on board appeared useless. 
 With one, however, we were more successful : an old 
 weather-beaten Spaniard was walking the deck ; al- 
 though an old pirate, his expression of countenance was 
 fine : taking a seat under the awning on the quarter- 
 deck, offering him a bundle of cigaritas, and lighting 
 one ourselves, by degrees induced him to enter into 
 conversation, and, in the course of one hour or more, I 
 learned from him some horrid truths. He told us that, 
 in four voyages, he had brought in the vessel in which 
 we were, 1600 human beings ; his was a fortunate ves- 
 sel, and seldom lost more than half a dozen a-voyage ; 
 once, however, he told us, he was not so lucky ; a ma- 
 lignant disease broke out on board soon after leaving 
 the coast, and, of 300 taken in in Africa, but ninety-five 
 were landed, more dead than alive, on the island. 
 
 " The materiel, such as handcuffs, chains, and even 
 the lower decks, are taken out, and are fitted up on the 
 coast of Africa. We saw the apertures in the decks, 
 to admit the air, and, as we were leaving the brig in 
 our boat alongside, the captain exultingly told us that 
 he knew we were officers of the British sloop of war, 
 pointing to the Champion, which was riding at anchor at 
 a little distance from us ; c but,' added he, * you are 
 welcome. I yesterday showed your captain (meaning 
 of the Champion) all over my trim vessel. I have no- 
 thing to conceal — you dare not touch me here ; and , 
 once outside, (with an expressive shrug of the shoulders,) 
 you may catch me if you can.' " 
 
 We have little authentic information as to the trans- 
 port of the slaves from one part of the coast to another 
 in south-east Africa, or from that coast to Arabia, and 
 the other countries northwards, to which they are con- 
 veyed. But Captain Moresby, to whom I have already 
 alluded, described to me the passage coastways, in the 
 
MORTALITY MIDDLE PASSAGE. 119 
 
 following terms : — " The Arab dows, or vessels, are 
 large, unwieldy, open boats, without a deck. In these 
 vessels temporary platforms or bamboos are erected, 
 leaving a narrow passage in the centre. The negroes 
 are then stowed in the literal sense of the word, in bulk; 
 the first along the floor of the vessel, two adults, side 
 by side, with a boy or girl resting between or on them, 
 until the tier is complete. Over them the first platform 
 is laid, supported an inch or two clear of their bodies, 
 when a second tier is stowed, and so on until they 
 reach the gunwale of the vessel." 
 
 " The voyage, they expect, will not exceed twenty- 
 four or forty-eight hours ; it often happens that a calm, 
 or unexpected land-breeze, delays their progress : in 
 this case a few hours are sufficient to decide the fate of 
 the cargo; those of the lower portion cf the cargo that 
 die cannot be removed. They remain until the upper 
 part are dead, and thrown over, and, from a cargo of 
 from 200 to 400 stowed in this way, it has been known 
 that not a dozen, at the expiration of ten days, have 
 reached Zanzebar. On the arrival of the vessels at 
 Zanzebar, the cargo are landed ; those that can walk 
 up the beach are arranged for the inspection of the 
 Imaum's officer, and the payment of duties — those that 
 are weak or maimed by the voyage, are left for the 
 coming tide to relieve their miseries. An examination 
 then takes place, which, for brutality, has never been 
 exceeded in Smithfleld." 
 
 In immediate connexion with the mortality incident 
 to the middle passage, I come now to the subject of 
 
 Wrecks, etc. 
 In Appendix D, of the African Institution Report for 
 1820, we are told that a " Spanish brig, on arrival at 
 Point a Petre, experienced a severe squall, and, on the 
 captain opening the hatches, (which were let down 
 during the squall,) he found fiftv of the poor Africans 
 dead." 
 
120 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 In Appendix B, of the same report we find in a state- 
 ment of Sir G. Collier, December 27, 1821, that the 
 schooner Carlotta embarked, off Cape Palmas, " 260 
 slaves ; and the very next day, in a tornado off St. 
 Ann's, for want of timely precaution, upset, and, dread- 
 ful to relate, the whole of these wretched people, con- 
 fined in irons sank with her." 
 
 In the parliamentary papers for 1822 we find, " The 
 schooner Yeanam was separated from the other vessels 
 in a dreadful storm, as they were proceeding to Havana, 
 and sank, with 380 slaves on board."* 
 
 The Accession, an English brig, brought into Bahia 
 thirty-nine negroes, whom she had rescued from a 
 wreck abandoned by its crew. Thirty-one were found 
 holding by the top of a mast. On cutting the side of 
 the vessel open, they took out ten more from an almost 
 pestilential atmosphere, and saw a number lying dead. 
 The crew, and 138 of the slaves, had been previously 
 taken out by the Viajante ; but, as that vessel was her- 
 self carrying 622 negroes, she had left these others to 
 perish in the waves. f 
 
 I find by an extract from the Sierra Leone Gazette 
 of the 12th of June, 1824, that, " on the appearance of 
 H. M. S. Victor, a boat full of men was seen to leave 
 the lugger (I'Henrietta Aime,) after which she got under 
 weigh, but instead of attempting to escape, run on shore 
 in a heavy surf, where she immediately went to pieces ; 
 and from the number of blacks observed on her decks, 
 there can be no doubt she had her cargo of slaves on 
 board, all of whom perished." 
 
 By the despatch of the Commissioners at Havana, of 
 26th February, 1826, it appears that " the Magico was 
 fallen in with and chased by H. M. S. Union, and, having 
 been brought to action in the course of the 21st January 
 she was finally run on shore on the morning of the 
 22d, and shortly after taken possession of. The crew 
 
 * Pari. Papers, 11th July, 1823, p. 7. 
 f Afr. Inst. Report, 1826, pp. 37, 38. 
 
MORTALITY MIDDLE PASSAGE. 121 
 
 had previously escaped to land with (it is supposed) 
 about 200 negroes ; many, however, were left behind, 
 severely wounded, some were hanging on at different 
 parts of the vessel, and from twenty to thirty of their 
 dead bodies were seen in the sea, evidently the conse- 
 quence of the endeavors made to force them to jump 
 overboard and swim to the shore. The crew even 
 carried their barbarity so far as to leave a lighted 
 match in the powder-magazine.* 
 
 In the parliamentary papers of 1827 I find the case 
 of the " Teresa," a Spanish schooner, which was sud- 
 denly laid on her beam-ends by a tornado, and almost 
 immediately went down, with 186 slaves on board. j 
 
 We have also the account of a wreck of a Portuguese 
 slave-schooner, the Piombeter, at the Bahamas, on the 
 20th of January, 1837, communicated to me by Major 
 M'Gregor, a special justice. He states that the vessel 
 was under fifty tons burden, and that 180 slaves had 
 been embarked in her ; " they were chiefly fine young 
 lads under fifteen years of age." About twenty had 
 died before the wreck took place. 
 
 In another letter, dated Nov. 1, 1837, he states that 
 several wrecks of slavers had taken place in his vicinity. 
 As to one of these he says, " Last Friday, the 27th ult., 
 a schooner vessel, under the Portuguese flag, was 
 totally wrecked on the shore of Harbor Island, where I 
 now reside in my official capacity, having upwards of 
 200 African slaves on board at the time, only fifty- 
 three of which were saved ; the greater part of the 
 ablest men, being chained together below at the time, 
 were consequently drowned in the hold of the vessel. 
 Sixty bodies have since been washed ashore, which I 
 got interred ; upwards of twenty were drifted yesterday 
 to the mouth of the harbor, who seem to have been 
 fettered upon the deck, and grouped together in one 
 heap. It is supposed that from fifty to sixty bodies are 
 
 * Class A, 1827, p. 99. f Class A, 1827, p. 30. 
 
 11 
 
122 
 
 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 still remaining in the hold of the hull, now almost im- 
 bedded in the sand. Attempts have been made to dive 
 for the bodies, but without success, they being found so 
 fast chained and crowded together, it was found impossi- 
 ble to remove them. 
 
 " I shall not shock your feelings by entering into the 
 details of the abominable conduct of the captain and 
 crew of this vessel during the passage, towards some of 
 the most youthful and best-looking on board; this was 
 brought to my knowledge by two of the Africans, who 
 speak Portuguese, and one who speaks a litttle broken 
 English. They appear to have conducted themselves 
 more like demons than human brings. 
 
 " This slaver, named the Invincible, took in the Afri- 
 cans at Port Prague, Cape de Verd Islands, and was 
 bound for Matanzas in the island of Cuba." 
 
 In a letter from Colonel Nicolls, at the Bahamas, of 
 date 1st August, 1837,* it is stated that " the Esperanza, 
 a Spanish slave-schooner, had been wrecked on one of 
 these islands during the preceding month. It was as- 
 certained that this vessel had embarked 320 negroes on 
 the coast of Africa ; of these only 220 were landed at 
 the time of the wreck. It appears that between sixty 
 and seventy murders had been committed during the 
 voyage on the helpless Africans ; and in this manner: — 
 When any of the slaves refused their food or became 
 sick, the boatswain's mate, with a weighty club, struck 
 them on the back of the neck, when they fell, and were 
 thrown overboard." 
 
 I make the following extract from the Jamaica Watch- 
 man, of 29th May, 1338 : — " A report having reached 
 Port Royal, that a Spanish schooner, having on board up- 
 wards of 300 Africans, had been stranded off the Pedro 
 shoals, H. M. ship Nimrod, and the Hornet schooner, 
 sailed yesterday morning for the purpose of taking her 
 cargo, and bringing them into port." " The vessels of 
 
 * Communicated to me Hy his brother, Col. Nicolls, R. M. 
 
MORTALITY MIDDLE PASSAGE. 123 
 
 war humanely sent to seek the unfortunate Africans on 
 board the slaver lately wrecked on the Pedro reefs, 
 have returned, bringing the melancholy information that 
 no traces of them could be found. The vessel had gone 
 to pieces, and 300 human beings consigned to a watery 
 grave. The crew had taken to their boats and landed 
 at Black River."* 
 
 Captain Wilson, R. N., in a letter on this subject, 
 dated 9th January, 1839, says: "I have overhauled 
 many slave-ships, and freely confess that it is impos- 
 sible to exaggerate the horrors they exhibit ; they are 
 all very much alike, the greater or less misery depend- 
 ing, usually, upon the size of the vessel, and the time 
 they might have been embarked, as every day brings 
 with it a fearful increase of disease, desperation, imbe- 
 cility, and death." 
 
 Passing over hundreds of cases of a description simi- 
 lar to those which I have noticed, I have now done with 
 these heart-sickening details ; and the melancholy truth 
 is forced upon us, that, notwithstanding all that has 
 been accomplished, the cruelties and horrors of the 
 passage across the Atlantic have increased ; nay, more, 
 they have been aggravated by the very efforts which 
 we have made for the abolition of the traffic. 
 
 " Facts, too, like these just mentioned, are not extra- 
 ordinary incidents, selected and remembered as such. 
 They are hourly occurrences of the trade ; and as they 
 are found in every instance where detection affords an 
 opportunity of inquiry, it is absurd to suppose that the 
 undetected slave-vessel is exempted from scenes of simi- 
 
 *I lately learnt that the "Aguila Yengadora," had arrived at 
 Havana, under the name of the " Esplorador," on the 30th of June, 
 1838, with 200 negroes, the remnant of a cargo of 560. During 
 her passage from Mozambique, she encountered a storm, which 
 compelled the crew to close the hatches on the negroes tor two days. 
 When the storm abated, it appeared that about 3u0 had perished 
 from hunger and suffocation, 
 
124 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 lar cruelty. It may fairly be assumed, that greater 
 cruelty does not obtain in the one vessel which is cap- 
 tured, than in the one hundred which escape. Some 
 of these have made eleven, some thirteen, successful 
 voyages, and there is little doubt that similar acts of 
 atrocity have been perpetrated in all — that all have 
 been marked by the same accumulation of human ago- 
 ny, and the same waste of human life."* 
 I will endeavor to give a 
 
 Summary 
 
 of the extent of the mortality incident to the middle 
 passage. Newton states that, in his time, it amounted 
 to one-fourth, on the average, of the number embarked. f 
 
 From papers presented to the House of Lords, in 
 1799, it appears that, in the year 1791, (three years 
 after the passing of the Slave Carrying Regulation Act>) 
 of 15,754 negroes embarked for the West Indies, &c, 
 1378 died during the passage, the average length of 
 which was fifty-one days, showing a mortality of 8£ 
 per cent. 
 
 The amount of the mortality in 1792 was still greater. 
 Of 31,554 slaves carried from Africa, no fewer than 
 5413 died on the passage, making somewhat less than 
 17 per cent., in fifty-one days.J 
 
 Captain Owen, in a communication to the Admiralty, 
 on the Slave Trade with the eastern coast of Africa, in 
 1823, states — "That the ships which use this traffic, 
 consider they make an excellent voyage if they save 
 one-third of the number embarked ;" " some vessels are 
 so fortunate as to save one-half of their cargo alive. "§ 
 
 Captain Cook says, in the communication to which I 
 have before alluded, as to the east coast traffic, " If 
 they meet with bad weather, in rounding the Cape, their 
 sufferings are beyond description ; and in some in- 
 stances, one-half of the lives on board are sacrificed. 
 
 * Afr. Inst. Report for 1825, p, 31. f Newton, p. 36. 
 
 * Debates in Parliament, 1806, Ap. p. 191. 
 § Class B, 1825, p. 41. 
 
MORTALITY MIDDLE PASSAGE SUMMARY. 125 
 
 In the case of the ' Napoleon,' from Quilimane, the loss 
 amounted to two-thirds. It was stated to me by cap- 
 tains and supercargoes of other slavers, that they made 
 a profitable voyage if they lost fifty per cent. ; and that 
 this was not uncommon." 
 
 Caldcleugh says, " scarcely two-thirds live to be 
 landed."* 
 
 Governor M'Lean, of Cape Coast, who has had many 
 opportunities of acquiring information on the subject, 
 has stated to me that he considers the average of deaths 
 on the passage, to amount to one-third. 
 
 Captain Ramsay, R. N., who was a long time on 
 service with the Preventive Squadron, also stated to me 
 that the mortality on the passage across the Atlantic 
 must be greater than the loss on the passage to Sierra 
 Leone, from the greater liberty allowed after capture, 
 and from the removal of the shackles. He believes the 
 average loss to be one-third. 
 
 Rear-Admiral Sir Graham Eden Hamond, Com- 
 mander-in-Chief on the South American station, in 
 1834, thus writes to the British Consul at Monte Video : 
 " A slave-brig of 202 tons was brought into this port 
 with 521 slaves on board. The vessel is said to have 
 cleared from Monte Video in August last, under a li- 
 cense to import 650 African colonists. 
 
 " The license to proceed to the Coast of Africa is 
 accompanied by a curious document, purporting to be 
 an application from two Spaniards at Monte Video, 
 named Villaca and Earquez, for permission to import 
 650 colonists, and 250 more — to cover the deaths on the 
 voyage."^ 
 
 Here we have nearly one-third given, apparently for 
 the average loss on the passage, and this, estimated by 
 the slave-dealers themselves on the American side of 
 the Atlantic. 
 
 I come next to consider the loss after capture. 
 
 * Vol. i., p. 56. f Class B, 1835, p. 141 . 
 
 11* 
 
126 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 Loss After Capture. 
 
 It is melancholy to reflect, that the efforts which we 
 have so long and so perseveringly made for the abo- 
 lition of the Slave Trade, should not only have been 
 attended with complete failure, but with an increase of 
 negro mortality. A striking example of the truth of 
 this remark is afforded, when we consider the great loss 
 of negro life which annually takes place subsequently 
 to the capture of the slave vessels, on their passage to 
 South America and the West Indies. 
 
 I do not intend, in this part of my subject, to discuss 
 the merits of the construction of the Mixed Commission 
 Courts, or their forms of proceeding ; nor do I propose, 
 here, to say anything as to the preference which, it ap- 
 pears to me, ought to be given to Fernando Po, over 
 Sierra Leone, as a station for a Commission Court, and 
 a depot for liberated Africans ; my purpose for the pre- 
 sent is, merely to state the facts which have come to 
 my knowledge, with the requisite evidence, bearing on 
 the mortality after capture. 
 
 Admiral Hamond, in a despatch to the Admiralty on 
 this subject, in the year 1834, puts the case of a slaver 
 overloaded with negroes, many of them in a sickly or 
 dying state, captured and brought into Rio Janeiro, (as 
 in the case of the ' Rio de la Plata,') where the miserable 
 slaves to the vessel, confined in a hot and close port, must 
 await the tardy process of the Mixed Commission Court: 
 and he goes on to say, that in such a case, " the stop- 
 ping of the slave-vessel is only exposing the blacks to 
 greater misery, and a much greater chance of speedy 
 death, than if they were left to their original destination 
 of slavery."* 
 
 In the 21st report of the African Institution, we have 
 the case of the Pauleta, captured off Cape Formosa, in 
 
 * Class B, 1835, p. 66. 
 
MORTALITY AFTER CAPTURE. 127 
 
 February, 1826, by "Lieutenant Tucker, H. M. Ship 
 Maidstone, with 221 slaves on board. Her burden was 
 only 69 tons, and into this space were thrust 82 men, 
 56 women, 39 boys, and 44 girls. The only provision 
 found on board for their subsistence, was yams of the 
 worst quality, and fetid water. When captured, both 
 small-pox and dysentery had commenced their ravages; 
 30 died on the passage to Sierra Leone, and the re- 
 mainder were landed in an extreme state of wretched- 
 ness and emaciation."* 
 
 In 1830, a Committee of the House of Commons was 
 appointed to consider the relative merits of Sierra Leone 
 and Fernando Po. Captain Bullen stated in evidence 
 before the Committee, that the Aviso, captured near 
 Fernando Po, took five weeks to reach Sierra Leone, 
 during which time forty -five of the slaves died :- and 
 that in the case of the Segunda Rosalia, the passage 
 occupied eleven weeks, during which more than 120 of 
 the slaves were lost.f 
 
 Lieutenant Tringham informed the committee that he 
 carried a Spanish schooner up to Sierra Leone as prize 
 master. She had 480 slaves on board at the time of 
 capture. The voyage to Sierra Leone occupied six 
 weeks, and 110 slaves died on the passage. In answer 
 to the question " If you had had to have taken the vessel 
 to Fernando Po for adjudication, instead of Sierra Leone, 
 the lives of those persons would have been saved ?" he 
 replied, " I think so." He afterwards said, that the 
 average voyage of the vessels he had taken from the 
 Bights of Benin and Biafra to Sierra Leone was five 
 weeks. :p 
 
 Mr. Jackson stated to the Committee, that the condi- 
 tion of the slaves, at the time of capture, was "most 
 deplorable, as to disease, and as to the mortality which 
 has ensued : in one instance, 179 out of 448 slaves, on 
 
 * Afr. Inst. Report for 1827, p. 9. 
 f Sierra Leone Report, 1830, p. 8. 
 t lb. p. 32. 
 
128 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 board of one vessel, died in their passage up ; in another, 
 115 out of 271. In all, with only one exception, the 
 numbers have been considerable."* 
 
 Mr. John McCormack, in his evidence, said, that on 
 going aboard slave-vessels after capture and the passage 
 to Sierra Leone, he generally found the slaves who had 
 been any length of time on the voyage, " in a most mis- 
 erable state of debility." And he adds, " They unavoida- 
 bly must, from the description of the vessels, suffer 
 very greatly ; many of these vessels have not more than 
 three feet between decks, and no air can get to them 
 except what comes down the hatchways. They are so 
 low in the water, no airports can be cut in their sides. "f 
 
 In the Appendix to the Report of this Committee, a 
 return is given for the period between 10th August, 
 1819, and 11th October, 1829, 
 
 Of slaves captured .... 25,212 
 
 Landed at Sierra Leone, or Fernando Po 21,563 
 
 Loss on the passage . 3,649:}: 
 Being nearly one-seventh, or about 14 per cent : and 
 this almost entirely on the passage to Sierra Leone. 
 
 Mr. Rankin, in his Visit to Sierra Leone, tells us of a 
 Portuguese schooner, the Donna Maria da Gloria, which 
 he saw there, with a cargo of slaves on board. She 
 had embarked them at Loando, in August, 1833, and 
 was captured by H. M. B. Snake. The captor took 
 the vessel to Rio ; but the Brazilian Mixed Commission 
 Court would not entertain the case; he was therefore 
 obliged to send her to Sierra Leone, where she arrived 
 on February 4, 1834. On her arrival, it was ascertain- 
 ed that she had lost 95 out of 430 slaves. A long pro- 
 cess ensued before the Mixed Commission Court, the 
 result of which was the liberation of the vessel ; and at 
 this period, her state is thus described : " Notwithstand- 
 
 * lb., p. 52. f lb., p. 66. * lb., Ap. p. 122. 
 
MORTALITY AFTER CAPTURE. 129 
 
 ing the exertions of Mr. Thomas Frazer, assistant-sur- 
 geon of the capturing ship, who continued to administer 
 to them while himself in a state of extreme suffering 
 and danger, before reaching Sierra Leone, 104 had died, 
 and 64 more (in a state that moved the heart even of 
 the slave-crew) were voluntarily landed by the master, 
 and taken charge of by the liberated African department. 
 The miserable remnant, in a state impossible to describe, 
 afflicted with ophthalmia, dysentery, and frightful ulcers, 
 and showing, also, some symptoms of small-pox, left 
 the harbor of Sierra Leone; the slaves having been 
 then on board 165 days, 137 having elapsed since her 
 capture : and of her original cargo of 430, 240 alone re- 
 mained."* 
 
 Dr. Cullen, of Edinburgh, who lately returned from 
 Rio de Janeiro, after a five years' residence there, thus 
 writes to Lord Glenelg, of date 28th February, 1838, 
 in reference to the Donna Maria having been released 
 at Sierra Leone : " Some months after this, they were 
 met by a Brazilian ship of war, near Bahia, in distress ; 
 and their numbers reduced to 170. "f 
 
 Mr. Rankin visited La Pantica, another vessel which 
 had been brought into Sierra Leone, " The ship," he 
 says, " was thronged with men, women, and children, 
 all entirely naked, and disgusting with disease : 274 
 were at this moment in the little schooner. When cap- 
 tured, 315 had been found on board, forty had died du- 
 ring the voyage from Old Calebar. Of the remainder, 
 8 or 10 died in the first week after liberation. The ma- 
 jority of the survivors were miserably persecuted by 
 ophthalmia and dysentery, and 50 were sent to the hos- 
 pital, for fever, at Kissey."J 
 
 In a report of the Sierra Leone Commissioners, dated 
 4th of February, 1835,§ it is stated that " the Sutil ar- 
 rived in this harbor on the 23d ult., with 228 slaves 
 
 * Rankin's visit, &c, vol. ii. p. 96. 
 
 f Class A (Further Series,) 1837, p. 91. 
 
 * Rankin, vol ii. p. 1 § Class A. 1835, p. 48. 
 
130 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 on board, 79 having died on the passage to this port, 
 whilst the vessel was in charge of the captors, in addi- 
 tion to a frightful loss of life which had previously 
 occured on the first night of the voyage, owing to a 
 ferocious scramble for room, amongst the densely-crowd- 
 ed negroes, and by which many were suffocated and 
 killed. The surgeon to the courts immediately visited 
 the slaves, and reported that there were 21 men and 
 boys, and 8 girls, sick with dysentery, many of them 
 being in an advanced stage of the disease." 
 
 In the Falmouth Packet of the 8th of December last, 
 I find the following statement : " The Brilliant, captured 
 by H.M.S Rover, on the 11th April, 1838, had 289 
 negroes on board ; but, owing to the delays which kept 
 them in their horrible state of imprisonment on board, 
 were daily dying, and from that time to the 16th of 
 September, 119 of these miserable creatures had died. 
 When the Buffalo left, the small-pox and dysentery 
 had broken out, and was sweeping them at tke rate of 
 8 and 10 per day." 
 
 The following list of seventeen vessels, most of which 
 were captured in the Bights of Benin and Biafra, and 
 brought for adjudication to Sierra Leone, will serve to 
 exhibit the loss after capture in a forcible manner : — 
 
MORTALITY AFTER CAPTURE. 
 
 131 
 
 Where 
 
 
 
 Number 
 
 Died 
 before 
 
 Refer- 
 ence. 
 
 bo 
 
 con- 
 
 Vessel's Name. 
 
 Nation. 
 
 on 
 
 Adjudi- 
 cation. 
 
 
 P-i 
 
 demned. 
 
 
 
 board 
 
 Class A 
 
 
 ^ f Emelia 
 § | Invincival 
 
 Spanish 
 Portuguese 
 
 282 
 
 107 
 
 1828 
 
 39 
 
 440 
 
 190 
 
 „ 
 
 59 
 
 Jj J Clementina 
 
 Brazilian 
 
 471 
 
 115 
 
 1829 
 
 82 
 
 g ] Ceres 
 
 do. 
 
 279 
 
 151 
 
 1830 
 
 64 
 
 -5 j Arcinia 
 
 do. 
 
 448 
 
 179 
 
 j> 
 
 38 
 
 s& \_ Mensageira 
 
 do. 
 
 353 
 
 109 
 
 
 58 
 
 aJ C Midas 
 
 Spanish 
 
 562 
 
 281 
 
 » 
 
 148 
 
 i a < Constancia* 
 
 do. 
 
 438 
 
 368* 
 
 „ 
 
 162 
 
 ; a (_ Fama da Cadizf 
 
 do. 
 
 980 
 
 680f 
 
 » 
 
 156 
 
 HH 
 
 r Christina 
 
 do. 
 
 348 
 
 132 
 
 1831 
 
 21 
 
 g 
 
 Tentadora 
 
 Brazilian 
 
 432 
 
 112 
 
 V 
 
 54 
 
 © 
 
 Umbellina 
 
 do. 
 
 377 
 
 214 
 
 J> 
 
 65 
 
 Formidable 
 
 Spanish 
 
 712 
 
 304 
 
 1835 
 
 50 
 
 s 
 
 Sutil 
 
 do. 
 
 335 
 
 124 
 
 JJ 
 
 48 
 
 1 
 
 ^ Minerva 
 
 do. 
 
 725 
 
 208 
 
 J> 
 
 56 
 
 | C Marte 
 § t Diligencia 
 
 do. 
 
 600 
 
 197 
 
 >> 
 
 163 
 
 do. 
 
 210 
 
 90 
 
 JJ 
 
 200 
 
 7992 
 
 3561 
 
 * This vessel was not 
 
 arought before the C 
 
 "ourt. The numbers 
 
 are given on the authori 
 
 ty of Mr. CommissE 
 
 iry Judge Macleay. 
 
 f The same of the Fai 
 
 nada Cadiz. 
 
 
 Showing a loss on these selected cases of 44 per cent.! 
 
 In 1830, the Committee of the House of Commons 
 came to the following resolution : that captured vessels 
 are, "on an average, upwards of five weeks on their 
 passage from the place of capture to Sierra Leone, 
 occasioning a loss of the captured slaves amounting to 
 from one-sixth to one-half of the whole number, while 
 the survivors are generally landed in a miserable state 
 oi weakness and debility."* 
 
 1 have not adverted to Rio de Janeiro, or the Havana, 
 on this head, because there are very few captures on 
 
 sierra Leone Report, 1830, p. 4. 
 
132 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 the American side of the Atlantic, and when captures 
 do occur, the time consumed in the passage to either of 
 these ports is little, if at all, more than what would have 
 been required for completing the voyage. 
 
 But it appears to be demonstrated, by evidence which 
 cannot be impugned, that the loss after capture on the 
 African side of the Atlantic, varies from one-sixth to 
 one-half the whole number. 
 
 Loss after Landing and in the Seasoning. 
 
 The last head of mortality, is that which occurs after 
 landing from the slave vessel, and in the seasoning. 
 
 We are here again obliged to go back, for informa- 
 tion, to the evidence at the end of the last century ; but 
 in this branch of the subject, so far as can be ascertain- 
 ed, there has been no improvement; on the contrary, 
 the slaves are now subjected to greater hardships, in 
 their being landed and concealed as smuggled goods, 
 than they were in former times, when a slave-vessel en- 
 tered the ports of Rio Janeiro and Havana as a fair 
 trader, and openly disposed of her cargo. 
 
 Mr. Falconbridge, whose evidence has already been 
 largely quoted, tells us that, on being landed, the ne- 
 groes are sold, sometimes by what is termed a scram- 
 ble ; " but previous thereto," he adds, " the sick or 
 refuse slaves, of which there are frequently many, are 
 usually conveyed on shore, and sold at a tavern by 
 public auction. These, in general, are purchased by 
 the Jews and surgeons, but chiefly upon speculation, at 
 so low a price as five or six dollars a-head. 
 
 " I was informed," he says, " by a Mulatto woman, 
 that she purchased a sick slave at Grenada, upon spe- 
 culation, for the small sum of one dollar, as the poor 
 wretch was apparently dying of the flux. It seldom 
 happens that any who are carried ashore in the ema- 
 ciated state to which they are generally reduced by that 
 disorder, long survive their landing. I once saw six- 
 teen conveyed on shore, and sold in the foregoing man- 
 
MORTALITY AFTER LANDING. 133 
 
 ner, the whole of whom died before I left the island, 
 which was within a short time after. 5 ' Various are the 
 deceptions made use of in the disposal of the sick slaves, 
 and many of these such as must excite in every hu- 
 mane mind the liveliest sensations of horror. I have 
 been well informed that a Liverpool captain boasted of 
 his having cheated some Jews by the following strata- 
 gem : " A lot of slaves afflicted with the flux, being 
 about to be landed for sale, he directed the surgeon to 
 Thus pre- 
 pared, they were landed and taken to the accustomed place 
 of sale, where, being unable to stand, unless for a very 
 short time, they are usually permitted to sit. The 
 Jews, when they examine them, oblige them to stand up 
 
 and when they 
 
 do not perceive this appearance, they consider it as a 
 symptom of recovery. In the present instance, such an 
 appearance being prevented, the bargain was struck, 
 and they were accordingly sold. But it was not long 
 before a discovery ensued. The excruciating pain, 
 which the prevention occasioned, not being to be borne 
 by the poor wretches, was removed, and the deluded 
 purchasers were speedily convinced of the imposition."* 
 In the report of the African Institution for 1818, the 
 case of the Joachim, a Portuguese slave-vessel, is no- 
 ticed ; and Lieutenant Eicke, after stating the wretched 
 condition of the slaves at and subsequent to the time of 
 capture, says, " That between the nineteenth and 
 twenty-fourth day of their being landed, thirteen more 
 died, notwithstanding good provisions, medical aid, and 
 kind treatment, and thirty more died between the 24th 
 of February and 16th instant; all occasioned, as he in 
 his conscience is firmly persuaded, by the cruel and 
 inhuman treatment of the Portuguese owners ; that 
 more than 100 of them were, at the time of their land- 
 ing, just like skeletons covered with skin, and moving 
 
 * Falconbridge, p. 33. 
 12 
 
134 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 by slow machinery, hardly maintaining the appearance 
 of animated human beings. That the remainder of 
 them were all enervated, and in a sickly state."* 
 
 In an official medical report as to the health of the 
 liberated Africans at the Gambia, of date 31st of De- 
 cember, 1833, and drawn up by Mr. Foulis, Assistant 
 Surgeon of the Royal African Corps, and Dr. James 
 Donovan, Acting Colonial Surgeon, it is stated that the 
 greater part of those who are weak and emaciated on 
 arrival, soon afterwards die ; many, after a longer or 
 shorter residence, fall into the same state, linger, and 
 also perish from causes not very dissimilar. For ihis 
 mortality, the medical board assigned, as probable 
 causes, the long confinement in slave-houses previous to 
 embarkation, want of cleanliness and ventilation while 
 on board the slave-ships, alterations in dress, food, and 
 habits, and, not the least, change of climate. These 
 act directly, simultaneously, and banefully on the sys- 
 tem in a very great number of instances. But when 
 the sad recollection of perpetual expatriation ; the lace- 
 rated feelings of kindred and friendship ; the rude viola- 
 tion of all the sacred and social endearments of country 
 and relationship ; the degrading anticipation of endless, 
 unmitigated bondage, are added to those, they act still 
 more injuriously on the constitution, although exerted 
 through the medium of mind. The moral and physical 
 combination of such extraordinary circumstances, con- 
 centrated with such fearful intensity, conjunctly creates 
 disease in such a redoubtable shape, as to induce a be- 
 lief that nothing similar has yet appeared in the annals 
 
 of physic."t 
 
 Mr. Rankin, in his work on Sierra Leone, says,:}: — 
 " To the King's Yards I paid frequent visits, and found 
 an interest awakened on behalf of the people. Of the 
 women, many were despatched to the hospital at Kissey, 
 
 * Afr. Inst. Report, 1818, p. 28. 
 
 f Records of the Colonial Office for 1833. * Vol. ii., p. 124. 
 
MORTALITY AFTER LANDING. 135 
 
 victims to raging fevers. Others had become insane. 
 I was informed that insanity is the frequent fate of the 
 women captives, and that it chiefly comes upon such as 
 at first exhibit most intellectual development, and great- 
 est liveliness of disposition. Instances were pointed 
 out to me. The women sustain their bodily sufferings 
 with more silent fortitude than the men, and seldom 
 destroy themselves ; but they brood more over their 
 misfortunes, until the sense of them is lost in madness. "* 
 Dr. Cullen,"f in his letter to Lord Glenelg, mentions 
 the following case: "About the beginning of 1834, a 
 small schooner (I think the name was the Duqueza de 
 Braganza, was captured by one of her British Majesty's 
 cruisers, and brought into Rio de Janeiro, having on 
 board between 300 and 400 Africans, mostly children ; 
 these poor creatures had suffered much, from their long 
 confinement in such a small vessel, and it is believed a 
 great, many had died on the passage. By the humanity 
 of the late Admiral Sir Michael Seymour, they were 
 taken on shore, and properly cared for, otherwise the 
 mortality amongst them after landing must have been 
 greater than it was." He then says, that they were 
 adjudged to be free. At the time of the sentence of the 
 Court, " they were reduced by deaths to 288, all of 
 whom were sent to the house of correction, to work for 
 the Brazilian government. I called at this house of 
 house of correction eight days after their arrival there, 
 
 * Vol. ii. p. 124. 
 
 + Dr. Cullen also writes, that, about the same time, a British 
 cruiser, the Raleigh, Captain Quin, brought in a slaver, the Rio da 
 Plata, with about 400 Africans on board, who were landed, and a 
 guard placed over them ; and that, " a few nights after they were 
 put ashore, the guard was surprised in the middle of the night, by 
 a band of fellows pretending to be justices of the peace, who carried 
 off 200 of the negroes, and next day no traces of them could be 
 found. Those that remained were taken to the house of correction, 
 and disposed of in the Brazilian fashion.'^ 
 
 t Class A, (Farther Series,) 1837, p. 91. 
 
136 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 when seven more had died, and there were then thirty- 
 five sick, confined in a small room, lying on the floor, 
 without bed or covering of any kind, with their heads 
 to the wall and their feet towards the centre, leaving a 
 narrow passage between the rows. The same day, I 
 saw about 100 of these children in an apartment on the 
 ground floor, sitting all round on their heels, after the 
 fashion of the country, and looking most miserable. 
 On the November following, I again visited the house 
 of correction, and learned that out of the 288, sent 
 there in June, 107 had died, and a great many more 
 were sick."* 
 
 In the letter from Havana, dated in 1838, from which 
 I have already quoted, the following account is given : 
 " In the cool of the evening we made a visit to the ba- 
 zaar. A newly imported cargo of 220 human beings 
 were here exposed for sale. They were crouched down 
 upon their forms around a large room : during a visit 
 of more than an hour that we were there, not a word 
 was uttered by one of them. On entering the room, 
 the eyes of all were turned towards us, as if to read in 
 our countenances their fate ; they were all nearly 
 naked, being but slightly clad in a light check shirt, 
 upon which was a mark upon the breast ; with a few 
 exceptions they were but skin and bone, too weak to 
 support their languid forms ; they were reclining on the 
 floor, their backs resting against the wall. When a 
 purchaser came they were motioned to stand, which they 
 obeyed, though with apparent pain ; a few were old and 
 grey ; but the greater proportion were mere children, of 
 from ten to thirteen or fifteen years of age ; when they 
 stood, their legs looked as thin as reeds, and hardly 
 capable of supporting the skeletons of their wasted 
 forms. The keeper informed us they were of several 
 distinct tribes, and that they did not understand one 
 another : this was apparent from the formation of the 
 
 * Class A, (Farther Series.) 1837, p. 91. 
 
MORTALITY AFTER LANDING. 137 
 
 head. While we were there, five little boys and girls 
 were selected and bought to go into the interior : no 
 regard is paid to relationship, and, once separated, they 
 never meet again ! We left the tienda, and, turning 
 through the gateway, we saw some who were lying 
 under the shade of the plantain, whose appearance told 
 that they, at least, would be liberated from bondage by 
 death. They were those who had suffered most during 
 the voyage, — their situation was most melancholy. I 
 offered to one the untasted bowl of cocoa-nut milk I 
 was about drinking, — she motioned it away with a look 
 which, even from a negress, was expressive of thank- 
 fulness, and which seemed to say how unused she was 
 to such kindness." 
 
 The Quarterly Review, (vol. xxx.,) contains an arti- 
 cle on Mengin's " Histoire de l'Egypte,"* in which the 
 reviewer, speaking of Ismael Pacha's expedition to the 
 south, says, *' The hopes of the Pacha, however, were 
 greatly disappointed in these black troops, (captured in 
 Soudan.) They were strong, able-bodied men, and not 
 averse from being taught ; but when attacked by dis- 
 ease, which soon broke out in the camp, they died like 
 sheep infected with the rot. The medical men ascribed 
 the mortality to moral rather than physical causes ; it 
 appeared in numerous instances, that, having been 
 snatched away from their homes and families, they 
 were even anxious to get rid of life ; and such was the 
 dreadful mortality that ensued, that, out of 20,000 of 
 these unfortunate men, 3000 did not remain alive at the 
 end of two years." 
 
 Dr. Bowring has stated to me, that the negroes which 
 have been conveyed into Egypt '« suffer much from 
 nostalgia, and when they have been gathered together 
 into regiments, the passionate desire to return home fre- 
 quently produced a languishing malady, of which they 
 
 * Histoire de l'Egypte, par Felix Mengin, 1823.— Quarterly 
 Review, vol. xxx. p. 491. 
 
 12* 
 
138 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 die in large numbers. The mortality among the slaves 
 in Egypt is frightful, — when the epidemical plague visits 
 the country, they are swept away in immense multi- 
 tudes, and they are the earliest victims of almost every 
 other domineering disease. I have heard it estimated 
 that five or six years are sufficient to sweep away a 
 generation of slaves, at the end of which time the 
 whole has to be replenished. This is one of the causes 
 of their low market-value. When they marry, their 
 descendants seldom live ; in fact, the laws of nature 
 seem to repel the establishment of hereditary slavery." 
 
 But it is needless to multiply instances on this head ; 
 and I shall only further notice a few of the authorities 
 for the amount of the mortality after landing, and in the 
 seasoning. 
 
 Mr. Pitt, in the debate on the Slave Trade, in 1791, 
 made the following observation — " The evidence before 
 the House, as to this point, (the mortality,) was per- 
 fectly clear; for it would be found in that dreadful cata- 
 logue of deaths in consequence of the seasoning and the 
 middle passage, which the House had been condemned 
 to look into, that one-half die ." 
 
 Mr. Wilberforce, in his letter of 1807, (page 98,) 
 says, " The survivors were landed in such a diseased 
 state, that 4£ per cent, of the whole number imported, 
 were estimated to die in the short interval between the 
 arrival of the ship and the sale of the cargo, probably 
 not more than a fortnight ; and after the slaves had 
 passed into the hands of the planters, the numbers 
 which perished from the effects of the voyage were al- 
 lowed to be very considerable." It ought not to be for- 
 gotten, that Pitt and Wilberforce are speaking of a 
 period when the Slave Trade was legal, and the Slave 
 Carrying Act in operation. What then may be the 
 increase of this mortality, now that the trade is clan- 
 destine, and the slaves packed on board of the " clip- 
 pers," like " bales of goods ?" 
 
 The Due de Broglie, when addressing the Chamber 
 
MORTALITY AFTER LANDING. 139 
 
 of Peers on this subject, in March, 1822, made the fol- 
 lowing remark — " And it is a well-known fact, that a 
 fourth, or even a third, of the cargo generally perishes 
 either on ship-board, or soon after the landing, from 
 the diseases incident to the voyage."* 
 
 In the debate of 1791, Mr. Stanley (then agent for 
 the Islands and advocating the continuance of the Slave 
 Trade) said, speaking of the negroes — " As to their 
 treatment in the West Indies, he was himself witness 
 that it was in general highly indulgent and humane," 
 and yet " he confessed that one-half, very frequently, 
 died in the seasoning." 
 
 I have now, in the discharge of a most painful duty, 
 brought under review a complication of human misery 
 and suffering, which I may venture to say has no pa- 
 rallel ; but before concluding this branch of the case, 
 it may be proper to exhibit, in a summary manner, the 
 amount of negro mortality, consequent on the Slave 
 Trade. 
 
 Summary. 
 
 1st. The less incident to the seizure, march to the 
 coast, and detention there. 
 
 Newton (p. 69) is of opinion, that the captives re- 
 served for sale, are fewer than the slain. 
 
 Mr. Miles (p. 69) stafed to the Committee in 1790, 
 that in one of the " Skirmishes", for slaves, "above 
 sixty thousand men" were destroyed. 
 
 Bosnian narrates, that in two of these skirmishes 
 "above one hundred thousand men were killed;" and 
 Mr. Devaynes has said, that in one of these " skir- 
 mishes" " 60,000 lost their lives. "f And Denham (p. 
 70) narrates, that in five marauding excursions, " 20,000 
 
 * Afr. Inst. Keport, Ap. 2, No. 16, 1823. 
 
 f It is obvious that these very large numbers must be received 
 with considerable qualification. There can be no doubt, however, 
 that the slaughter was great. 
 
140 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 at least" were slaughtered, and 16,000 sent into slavery ; 
 and he gives another instance, where " probably 6000" 
 were slaughtered, in procuring 3000 slaves. 
 
 On the route to the coast, we may cite the authority 
 of Park, Denham, &c. ; and M. Mendez (p. 80) esti- 
 mates the loss on this head to amount to five-twelfths 
 of the whole. 
 
 For the mortality occasioned by detention before 
 embarkation, we have the authority of Frazer, Park, 
 Leonard, Landers, and Baillie. 
 
 From these authorities, we are fairly entitled to 
 assume that from the sources — seizure, march, and 
 detention, — for every slave embarked^ one life is sa- 
 crificed. 
 
 2dly. The loss from the middle passage appears to 
 be not less than 25 per cent. For this there is con- 
 clusive evidence. The witnesses have no assignable 
 motive for exaggeration ; they are men holding public 
 situations, of unimpeachable veracity, and with the best 
 opportunities of forming a correct estimate. 
 
 The Rev. John Newton had, himself, been for many 
 years a slave-trader, and speaks of what he saw. The 
 Slave Trade was then legal, and the vessels employed 
 were usually large and commodious, and very different 
 from the American clippers now in use. He rates the 
 loss during the mid-passage at 25 per cent. Captain 
 Ramsay had commanded one of H. M. cruisers, em- 
 ployed in suppressing the Slave Trade, had taken many 
 slavers, and could not be ignorant of the state of the 
 captured cargoes. His estimate is 33 per cent. 
 
 Slave-trading vessels are continually passing under 
 the eye of the Governor of Cape Coast Castle. His 
 attention has been constantly kept alive to the subject, 
 and few men have had such opportunities of arriving at 
 the real truth. Mr. Maclean's estimate is thirty-three 
 per cent. 
 
 Commodore Owen reports that which came to his 
 
MORTALITY AFTER LANDING. 141 
 
 knowledge while he was employed by government in 
 surveying the eastern coast of Africa. His estimate is 
 fifty per cent. This excess, as compared with the 
 others, is accounted for, by the additional length of the 
 voyage round the Cape of Good Hope. 
 
 If, after such testimony, there were room for hesita- 
 tion, it must be removed by witnesses of a very different 
 kind. The Spanish slave-merchants of Monte Video, 
 it is fair to presume, are well acquainted with the usual 
 rate of mortality in their slave-vessels ; and we may 
 give them credit for not acting contrary to their own 
 interests; so confident are they that, at least, one-third 
 will perish, that they providently incur the expense of 
 sending out that amount of surplus, for the purpose (in 
 their own words) " of covering the deaths on the vov- 
 
 a § e -" 
 
 I should be justified in taking the average of these 
 authorities, which would be thirty-four per cent ; but as 
 it is my wish to be assuredly within the mark, I will 
 state the mortality from the middle passage at twenty- 
 five per cent. 
 
 In the same spirit I will take no notice of the mor- 
 tality after capture, which, says the report of the Parlia- 
 mentary Committee, amounts to from one-sixth to one - 
 half. 
 
 3dly. As to the loss after landing, and in the season- 
 ing. 
 
 Under this head, we have, among others, two au- 
 thorities which require particular attention ; one of them 
 referring to the time when the Slave Trade was legal, 
 the other to a recent date, and both of them coming from 
 unexceptionable quarters. Mr. Stanley, a West India 
 agent, arguing for the continuance of the Slave Trade, 
 and lauding the treatment of the negroes, confesses that 
 one-half frequently die in the seasoning. The other, 
 the report of the Medical Officers appointed to investigate 
 the state of the liberated Africans at the Gambia ; which 
 
142 , THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 describes a large proportion of them as laboring under 
 disease, " nothing equal to which has been known hither- 
 to in the annals of physic." If such be their state when 
 they fall into the hands of the British, are treated by 
 them with kindness, and are relieved from their most 
 frightful apprehensions, may we not suppose that their 
 state is still more miserable, and the mortality still great- 
 er, when they are landed clandestinely at Cuba, and 
 know that they are doomed to interminable bondage? 
 
 Upon the strength and authority of these facts, I might 
 fairly estimate the loss under this head at one-third ; but 
 I think I cannot err, on the side of exaggeration, in set- 
 ting it down at twenty per cent. 
 
 Nor does the mortality stop here. In slave countries, 
 but more especially where the Slave Trade prevails, 
 there is, invariably, a great diminution of human life ; 
 the numbers annually born, fall greatly below the num- 
 bers which perish. It would not be difficult to prove, 
 that in the last fifty years there has been in this way, a 
 waste of millions of lives ; but as this view of the subject 
 would involve the horrors of slavery, as well as of the 
 Slave Trade, I shall abstain from adding anything on 
 this head, to the catalogue of mortality which I have 
 already given. 
 
 We have thus brought into a narrow compass the 
 mortality arising from the Slave Trade. 
 
 Per Cent. 
 
 1. Seizure, march and detention . . .100 
 
 2. Middle passage, and after capture . 25 
 
 3. After landing, and in the seasoning . 20 
 
 145 
 
 So that for every 1000 negroes alive at the end of a 
 year after their deportation, and available to the planter, 
 we have a sacrifice of 1450. 
 
 Let us apply this calculation to the number landed 
 annually in Cuba, Brazil, &c, which, as I have already 
 
MORTALITY AFTER LANDING. 143 
 
 shown (p. 25) may be fairly rated at 150,000 ; of these 
 20 per cent., or 30,000, die in the seasoning, leaving 
 120,000 available for the planter. 
 
 If 150,000 were landed, there must have been em- 
 barked 25 per cent., or 37,500 more, who perish in the 
 passage; and if 187,500 were embarked, 100 per cent., 
 or 187,500 more, must have been sacrificed in the 
 seizure, march, and detention. 
 
 It is impossible for any one to reach this result, with- 
 out suspecting, as well as hoping, that it must be an ex- 
 aggeration ; and yet there are those who think that this is 
 too low an estimate.* 
 
 I have not, however, assumed any fact, without 
 giving the data on which it rests ; neither have I extract- 
 ed from those data any immoderate inference. I think 
 that the reader, on going over the calculation, will per- 
 ceive that I have in almost every instance, abated the 
 deduction, which might with justice have been made. 
 If then we are to put confidence in the authorities 
 (most of them official) which I have quoted, we cannot 
 avoid the conclusion, — terrible as it is, — that the Slave 
 
 * Mr. Rankin says : — 
 
 "The old and new Calebar, the Bonney, Whydah, and theGal- 
 linas, contribute an inexhaustible supply for the French islands of 
 the West Indies, Rio Janerio, Havana, and the Brazils, where, not- 
 withstanding every opposition and hinderance from the British 
 cruisers, one hundred thousand are supposed to arrive in safety 
 annually ; five times that number having been lost by capture or 
 death. Death thins the cargoes in various modes ; suicide destroys 
 many ; and many are thrown overboard at the close of the voyage ; 
 for as a duty often dollars is set by the Brazilian Government upon 
 each slave upon landing, such as seem unlikely to survive, or to 
 bring a price sufficiently high to cover this custom house tax, are 
 purposely drowned before entering port. Those only escape these 
 wholesale murders who will probably recover health and flesh when 
 removed to the fattening pens of the slave-farmer, a man who con- 
 tracts to feed up the skeletons to a marketable appearance." Vol. 
 ii.p. 71. 
 
144 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 Trade between Africa and America annually subjects 
 to the horrors of slavery . . . 120,000 
 
 And murders . . . 30,000 
 
 37,500 
 187,000 
 255,000 
 
 Annual victims of Christian Slave Trade 375,000 
 " " of Mahomrnedan 
 
 Annual loss to Africa . . . 475,000 
 
 Consequent State of Africa. 
 
 Even this is but a part of the total evil. The great 
 evil is, that the Slave Trade exhibits itself in Africa as 
 a barrier, excluding everything which can soften, or 
 enlighten, or civilize, or elevate the people of that vast 
 continent. The Slave Trade suppresses all other trade, 
 creates endless insecurity, kindles perpetual war, 
 banishes commerce, knowledge, social improvement, 
 and above all, Christianity, from one quarter of the 
 globe, and from 100,000,000 of mankind. 
 
 * The following is an estimate of the amount and mortality of 
 the Northern or Mahomrnedan Slave Trade: — 
 Number annually exported by the Imaum of 
 
 Muscat ". 30,000 
 
 Do. by Traders to Barbary, Egypt, &c. . . 20,000 
 
 50,000 
 
 Loss on Seizure, 
 
 50 per cent 
 
 " March 
 
 30 
 
 " Detention 
 
 " " 
 
 " Middle Passage 
 
 c< a 
 
 Seasoning 
 
 20 
 
 In all . . 100f 
 
 50,000 
 
 Annual victims of Mohammedan Slave Trade 100,000 
 
 t Dr. Bowring states, (as to Egypt) that 30 per cent, perish in the first 10 
 day9 after seizure : and that the loss from the time of capture to the arrival 
 at the market in Cairo may be estimated at 100 per cent. 
 
failure of efforts, etc. 145 
 
 Failure of Efforts already made for Suppres- 
 sion of the Slave Trade. 
 
 It is but too manifest that the efforts already made for 
 the suppression of the Slave Trade, have not accom- 
 plished their benevolent object. 
 
 The people of England take a more lively and in- 
 tense interest in this, than perhaps in any other foreign 
 subject. The Government, whether in the hands of the 
 one party or the other, cannot be accused of having, for 
 a long series of years, been wanting either in zeal, or 
 exertion for its suppression. Millions of money and 
 multitudes of lives have been sacrificed ; and in return 
 for all we have only the afflicting conviction, that the 
 Slave Trade is as far as ever from being suppressed. 
 Nay, I am afraid the fact is not to be disputed, that 
 while we have thus been endeavoring to extinguish the 
 traffic, it has actually doubled in amount. 
 
 In the debate of 2d April, 1792, Mr. Fox rated the 
 Slave Trade at 80,000 annually : he says, " I think the 
 least disreputable way of accounting for the supply of 
 slaves, is to represent them as having been convicted of 
 crimes by legal authority. What does the House think 
 is the whole number of these convicts exported 
 annually from Africa? 80,000." In the same debate 
 Mr. Pitt observed, "I know of no evil that ever has ex- 
 isted, nor can imagine any evil to exist, worse than the 
 tearing of 80,000 persons annually from their native 
 land, by a combination of the most civilised nations in 
 the most enlightened quarter of the globe." The late 
 Zachary Macaulay, than whom the African has had no 
 better friend, told me a few days before his death, that 
 upon the most accurate investigation he was able to 
 make as to the extent of the Slave Trade, he had come 
 to the conclusion that it was 70,000 annually, fifty 
 years ago. Twenty years ago the African Institution 
 reported to the Duke of Wellington that it was 70,000. 
 We will assume then that the number at the commence- 
 13 
 
146 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 merit of the discussion was 70,000 negroes annually 
 transported from. There is evidence before the Parlia- 
 mentary Committees, to show that about one-third was 
 for the British islands, and one-third for St. Domingo, so 
 that strictly speaking, if the Slave Trade of other coun- 
 tries had been stationary, they ought only at the utmost to 
 import 25,000 ; but I have already proved that the 
 number annually landed in Cuba and Brazil, &c, is 
 150,000, being more than double the whole draught 
 upon Africa, including the countries where it had ceased 
 when the Slave Trade controversy began. Twice 
 as many human beings are now its victims as when 
 Wilberforce and Clarkson entered upon their noble 
 task ; and each individual of this increased number, in 
 addition to the horrors which were endured in former 
 times, has to suffer from being cribbed up in a narrower 
 space, and on board a vessel, where accomodation is 
 sacrificed to speed. Painful as this is, it becomes still 
 more distressing if it shall appear that our present sys- 
 tem has not failed by mischance, from want of energy, 
 or from want of expenditure, but that the system itself 
 is erroneous, and must necessarily be attended with 
 disappointment. 
 
 Hitherto we have effected no other change than a 
 change in the flag under which the trade is carried on. 
 Jt was stated by our ambassador at Paris, to the French 
 minister, in 1624, (I speak from memory,) that the 
 French flag covered the villains of all nations. For 
 some years afterwards the Spanish flag was generally 
 used. Now, Portugal sells her flag, and the greater 
 part of the trade is carried on under it. Her governors 
 openly sell, at a fixed price, the use of Portuguese papers 
 and flag. 
 
 So grave an accusation ought not to be made without 
 stating some of the authorities on which it is grounded. 
 In a Parliamentary paper on the subject of the Slave 
 Trade, presented in 1823, Sir Charles M'Carthy states 
 
FAILURE OF EFFORTS, ETC. 147 
 
 in his letter of the 19th June 1822,* that " the case of 
 the ' Conde de Ville Flor,' seized near Bissao, fully 
 establishes that Signor Andrade, the governor, had 
 shipped a number of slaves on his own account." Sir 
 Charles further states that " he received repeated re- 
 ports of the governors of Bissao and Cacheo having 
 full cargoes of slaves in irons ready for all purchasers ; 
 and that the traffic is carried on openly at the Cape de 
 Verd Islands, St. Thomas, and Prince's." This state- 
 ment is confirmed by " Lieutenant Hagan, of Her 
 Majesty's brig Thistle, who informed him that the 
 traffic in slaves was carried on at Bissao and Cacheo in 
 the most open manner, under the sanction of the 
 governor, the latter of whom is the principal dealer in 
 slaves." 
 
 The practice of 1822 has continued to the present time. 
 On the 3d March, 1838, Lord Palmerston, in a spirited 
 note, states to the Portuguese Minister, " that the 
 Portuguese flag i« lent, with the connivance of Portu- 
 guese authorities, to serve as a protection for all the 
 miscreants of every other nation in the world, who may 
 choose to engage in such base pursuits."| 
 
 The charge thus made, extends only to the lending 
 of the flag of Portugal ; it might have gone farther. In 
 an enclosure in a letter from Lord Palmerston to our 
 Ambassador at Lisbon, dated 30th April, 1833, it 
 appears that " the Governor of Angola has established 
 an impost or fee of 700,000 reis to be paid to him for 
 every vessel which embarks slaves from thence, it being 
 understood that upon payment of the above-mentioned 
 sum, no impediment to the illicit trade shall be interpos- 
 ed by the governor, nor any farther risk be incurred by 
 the persons engaged in the trade. "+ Nor is this all. 
 In the same document we find that the sovernor, not 
 
 * Papers, Slave Trade, 11th July, 18S3. 
 
 f Class B, (Farther Series,) 1837, p. 29, presented 1838. 
 
 i Class B, (Farther Series,) 1837, p. 35. 
 
148 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 content with lending and letting out the flag of Portugal 
 has set up as a slave-trader himself; " sending from 
 Angola, for his own account, a shipment of slaves, 
 sixty in number, which he has consigned to a notorious 
 slave-dealer of the name of Vincente, at Rio de Janeiro."* 
 ji»It is very truly added, that these violations of the 
 treaties " form but a small portion of the offences of this 
 kind constantly committed by Portuguese subjects, both 
 in and out of authority." 
 
 When Portugal shall have been persuaded or com- 
 pelled to desist from this insulting violation of treaty, it 
 is but too probable that Brazil will step into her place. 
 We find it stated in a despatch from Her Majesty's 
 Commissioners at Rio de Janeiro to Lord Palmerston, 
 of date the 17th of November, 1837,| that "The change 
 in the Brazilian Government which took place on the 
 19th September, has had this important consequence in 
 respect to the Slave Trade, that while the late Govern- 
 ment appeared to wish to put down the traffic, as 
 matter of principle, and of compact with Great Britain, 
 the present Government, as far as it is represented by 
 Senior Vasconcellos (Minister of Justice, and provision- 
 ally Minister for the empire,) has proclaimed the traffic 
 to be indispensable to the country, has released those 
 concerned who were under prosecution, and set at 
 nought the engagement with Great Britain on this head." 
 And the British Consul at Pernambuco writes to Lord 
 Palmerston, of date 15th February, 1838, " The editor 
 of the Jornal de Commercio declares, that this import- 
 ant subject has already passed the Senate, and that 
 there is every probability it will be made law in the 
 next Session of the Legislature, to annul the enact- 
 ment of 17th November, 1831, which prohibits the 
 Slave Trade in Brazil under severe penalties.":}: When 
 
 * Class B, (Farther Series,) 1837, p. 35. 
 f Class A, (Farther Series,) 1837, p. 80 
 t Class B, (Farther Series,) 1837, p. 54. 
 
FAILURE OF EFFORTS, ETC. 149 
 
 Brazil shall be induced to surrender the traffic, it is not 
 improbable that it will be transferred to Buenos Ayres, 
 or one of the many remaining flags of South America ; 
 then to Texas ; and when we shall have dealt with all 
 these, and shall have rung from them a reluctant en- 
 gagement to renounce the iniquity, we shall still have 
 to deal with the United States of North America. 
 
 How long, it may be asked, will it take before we 
 have succeeded in gaining from the whole world a con- 
 currence in the provisions of the existing treaty with 
 Spain? We began our negotiations with Portugal about 
 thirty years ago ; and in what state are they now? By 
 a despatch from Lord Howard de Walden, our am- 
 bassador at Lisbon, to Lord Palmerston, of date 25th 
 February, 1838, we are informed that Viscount de Sa 
 da Bandeira, the Portuguese minister, having been 
 urged to proceed with the negotiations, replied, " That 
 he would do so as soon as he had settled a treaty with 
 Spain for the navigation of the Douro, the negotiation of 
 which occupied his whole time."* 
 
 To touch upon one only of the many difficulties 
 which lie in the way of a universal for confederacy put- 
 ting down the Slave Trade, I ask, how shall we get the 
 consent of North America to the article yielding the 
 right of search. She has told us, in the most peremptory 
 terms, that she will never assent to it ; and it should be 
 remembered, that this confederacy must either be uni- 
 versally binding, or it is of no avail. It will avail us 
 little that ninety-nine doors are closed, if one remains 
 open. To that one outlet, the whole Slave Trade of 
 Africa will rush. 
 
 Does any one suppose that even in the space of half 
 a century, we shall have arrived at one universal combi- 
 nation of all countries, for the suppression of the Slave 
 Trade? And a delay of fifty years, at the present rate 
 
 * Class B, (Farther Series,) 1837, p. 30. 
 13* 
 
150 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 of the traffic, implies, at the very least, the slaughter of 
 eleven millions of mankind. 
 
 But let us suppose this combination to have been effect- 
 ed, and that all nations consent to the four leading articles 
 of the Spanish Treaty. When that is done it will be 
 unavailing. 
 
 In the first place, during the three years which have 
 elapsed since the treaty with Spain, the Slave Trade 
 has been carried on by the Spaniards, at least to as 
 great an extent as formerly. On the 2d January, 1836, 
 the Commissioners at Sierra Leone say, " There is 
 nothing in the experience of the past year to show that 
 the Slave Trade with Spain has, in any degree, diminish- 
 ed."* 
 
 The Commissioners at the Havana say, " Never 
 has the Slave Trade at the Havana reached such a 
 disgraceful pitch as during the year 1835. "J I could 
 corroborate this statement, that there is no diminution 
 in the Spanish Slave Trade, by a variety of letters. One 
 gentleman, upon whose sources of information and ac- 
 curacy I can entirely rely, says, in a letter dated Sep- 
 tember, 1836, " the Slave Trade, which was thought to 
 be dead here some years ago, has still a mighty being, 
 and stalks over the island in all its pristine audacity." 
 Another, of date November, 1836, says, "Article first 
 of the late Treaty between England and Spain states, 
 ' The Slave Trade is hereby declared, on the part of 
 Spain, to be henceforward totally and finally abolished 
 in all parts of the world.' In answer to this, we assert 
 that the Slave Trade carried on by the Spaniards is 
 more brisk than ever. In December, 1836, a gentleman, 
 detained a month at St. Jago de Cuba, witnessed the 
 arrival of five slave cargoes from Africa." 
 
 But it may be said that this arises from the facility 
 with which the Portuguese flag is obtained, andthat when 
 Portugal, and all other powers, shall have consented to 
 
 Class A, 1835, p. 9. f Ibid. p. 206. 
 
FAILURE OF EFFORTS, ETC. 151 
 
 the Spanish Treaty, this mode of evasion will have 
 ceased. It is perfectly true that the Portuguese flag is 
 obtained with the greatest facility at a vc ry moderate price. 
 At the Cape de Verd Islands, at the river Cacheo, at St. 
 Thomas', at Prince's, and at Angola, the Portuguese flag 
 may be easily and cheaply purchased. But, notwithstand- 
 ing, we find by the last parliamentary papers, that out of 
 the twenty-seven vessels condemned at Sierra Leone, 
 eight were under the Spanish flag : and of the seventy- 
 two vessels which left the port of Havana for the 
 coast of Africa, in 1837, no fewer than nineteen at least 
 were Spanish.* The slave-traders surely did not think 
 that the Spanish Treaty was a death-blow to the trade, 
 or they would not have neglected the precaution of pur- 
 chasing, at a very easy price, the protection afforded 
 by the flag of Portugal. 
 
 They had their choice of the Spanish flag, attended 
 by all the dangers supposed to arise from the Spanish 
 Treaty, or the Portuguese flag, which is not liable to 
 these dangers ; and for the sake of saving a very trivial 
 sum, they prefer the former. 
 
 But there is another mode of measuring the import- 
 ance which the slave-traders attach to the Spanish Treaty. 
 The Commissioners, in their Report of 1836, after 
 stating that the first effect of the treaty was to arrest 
 the Slave Trade, add, that this alarm soon wore away, 
 and " now the only visible effect of the reported new 
 treaty is an increased rate of premium out and home, 
 with an augmented price of negroes. " j" 
 
 The Spanish Treaty has been for some time a topic 
 of continual congratulation and complacency ; and there 
 are many who think that if we could but induce Portu- 
 gal and other countries to follow the example of Spain 
 there would be an end of the Slave Trade. A case 
 occurs in the papers presented to Parliament in 1838, 
 
 * Class A (Farther Series,) 1837, p. 68. 
 -j- Class A, 1835, p. 207. 
 
152 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 which throws a strong light on the real efficacy of the 
 Spanish Treaty ; and, though I can give but a scanty 
 outline of it here, it deserves particular attention. The 
 Vincedora, a Spanish vessel officered by Spaniards, 
 having lately returned from a trading voyage to Africa, 
 came into the port of Cadiz, bound for Porto Rico. At 
 Cadiz she took in forty-nine passengers, and iproceeded 
 on her way. The passengers suffered considerable 
 annoyance from the effluvia proceeding from the lower 
 parts of the ship. By this, and by other circumstances, 
 some vague suspicion seems to have been engendered. 
 Leaving Porto Rico, the vessel proceeded towards Cuba; 
 on her way thither she fell in with the Ringdove, Cap- 
 tain Nixon. The captain of the Vincedora denied that 
 he had negroes on board ; but the mate of the Ringdove 
 insisted on pursuing his search, and in the forepeak of 
 the vessel, closed from the light or air, were found 
 twenty-six negroes ;* " most of them were young, from 
 ten years old upwards." 
 
 They could not speak one word of Spanish, unless it 
 be true, which the Spanish witnesses labor hard to 
 prove, that one of them was once heard to use the word 
 " Senor." From these circumstances, from the stench 
 perceived by the passengers after leaving Cadiz, from 
 the fact of three iron coppers being found, and large 
 quantities of rice and Indian corn having daily been 
 dressed in them ; from the care taken to debar the 
 passengers from all access to those parts of the ship 
 where they were found ; and from the testimony, 
 through an interpreter, of the negroes themselves, " who 
 all declared most solemnly, that they had never been in 
 another vessel /and swore to it, after the manner of their 
 country ;" from all these circumstances it is clear (how- 
 
 ♦They appeared to be of recent importation, had no other cloth- 
 ing than a piece of cloth tied round their loins, their heads were 
 shaven, and some of them were in a sad state of emaciation. Class 
 A, 1837, p. 40. 
 
FAILURE OF EFFORTS, ETC. 153 
 
 ever incredible the atrocity) that these wretches had 
 been shipped at Congo, in Africa, had been carried 
 across the Atlantic to Cadiz, again across the Atlantic 
 to Porto Rico, and were, when taken, in the progress 
 of a third voyage. 
 
 No record exists of the number originally shipped, 
 nor of those who were so happy as to perish by the 
 way, nor of the extent of misery undergone by those 
 who endured a voyage from Africa to Europe, and 
 from Europe to America, of not less than 6000 miles, 
 pining in their narrow, loathsome, and sultry prison, for 
 want of air, and light, and water. These particulars 
 will never be known in this world ; but who will deny 
 that the English captain is justified in calling it a case 
 of" utter barbarity?" He might have added, of "utter 
 perfidy." In a private letter, he says, — "The Vin- 
 cedora took her wretched cargo round by Cadiz (can 
 you conceive such barbarity ?) and there got armed 
 with government authority as a packet, wearing the 
 royal colors and pendant ; they (the slaves) will be 
 liberated, and I may be prosecuted." The fact of her 
 having slaves on board must have been known to the 
 custom-house authorities at Cadiz. 
 
 However, thanks to the Spanish Treaty, the ship is 
 captured at last, and the Spanish authorities will be, of 
 course, as eager as ourselves to punish the villain who 
 has thus defied her decrees. Captain Nixon took his 
 prize to the Havana, and she was tried before the 
 Mixed Commission Court. The captain of the slaver set 
 up the impudent defence — First, that these naked, filthy, 
 shaven, emaciated creatures, were " passengers," and, 
 next, that thev were " parcels of goods from Porto 
 Rico." 
 
 The court, by the casting vote of the Spanish umpire, 
 found this false and flimsy pretext valid, acquitted the 
 slaver, restored the vessel, and condemned the innocent 
 negroes to slavery, while Captain Nixon is exposed to 
 heavy damages for doing his duty ! The captain of the 
 
154 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 Vincedora is triumphant, and, in a complaint which he 
 made relating to certain articles which, as he alleges, 
 are missing, closes the scene by a high-flown address 
 to the court, on " the faith of treaties," " the sacred 
 rights of property and national decorum," and "the 
 outraged honor of the respected flag of England !" 
 
 Worse than all is the fact that this case has been 
 taken as a precedent, and already another vessel, the 
 Vigilante, has been liberated on the strength of this de- 
 cision. 
 
 Had I fabricated a case to show the perfidy of the 
 Spanish authorities, and the barefaced evasions, which 
 are sufficient, in Lord Palmerston's words, " to reduce 
 the treaty to mere waste paper," I could scarcely have 
 produced one so much to the purpose. 
 
 I am compelled to go further. It may be pretended 
 that it was only by accident that the slaver, while she 
 remained at Cadiz, escaped the vigilance of the custom- 
 house officers, and by a second fortunate accident that 
 she obtained permission to bear the royal pendant ; but 
 can it also be ascribed to accident, that the two persons 
 selected by the Spanish Government as commissioner 
 and arbitrator should have acted throughout as if their 
 proper business was to defend the slave-trader, and de- 
 feat the treaty? It would seem that, while hardly any 
 evidence is strong enough to convict a slaver, no pretext 
 is too miserable for his defence. For example, the Vin- 
 cedora is declared to be " wrongfully detained," while 
 the General Laborde, " a well-known and fully-equip- 
 ped slaver," is liberated " because the wife and children 
 of the supercargo were on board."* 
 
 Upon the whole, I can arrive at no other conclusion than 
 that the Spanish Treaty, as interpreted by the Spanish 
 judges, is an impudent fraud; and that those who shall 
 be credulous enough to rely upon it for the full attain- 
 ment of our object will be fatally deceived. 
 
 Thus, then, stands the argument : we shall never ob- 
 
 * Class A, 1837 p. 91. 
 
FAILURE OF EFFORTS, ETC. 155 
 
 tain the concurrence of all the powers to the provisions 
 of the Spanish Treaty; and if we get it, we shall find it 
 not worth having. But even assuming that those in- 
 surmountable obstacles have been overcome, and that 
 the Spanish Treaty, improved and rendered more strin- 
 gent, becomes the law of the civilised world ; it will still 
 appear that this treaty will not accomplish our object. 
 Another step must be taken; and the next step will be 
 to make slave-trading Piracy punishable with death. 
 
 Once more, then, we shall have to tread the tedious 
 round of negotiation. To say nothing of the difficulty 
 we shall find in inducing Portugal to adopt the greater 
 measure, when she has so long refused to take the minor 
 step; and nothing of the difficulty of persuading Brazil 
 to advance, when she has exhibited unequivocal symp- 
 toms of a disposition to retreat; nor of the reluctance 
 of Spain, (who thinks she has conceded too much,) to 
 make still farther concessions — to say nothing of all 
 these, France stands in our way. She has declared 
 that by her constitution, it cannot be made piracy. 
 
 I am afraid that there is not the remotest probability 
 of inducing all nations to concur in so strong a measure, 
 as that of stigmatising the Slave Trade as piracy. 
 
 But we will suppose all these difficulties removed ; a 
 victory in imagination has been obtained over the pride 
 of North America, the cupidity of Portugal, the law- 
 lessness of Texas, and the constitution of France. Let 
 it be granted that the Spanish Treaty, with an article 
 for piracy, has become universal. I maintain that the 
 Slave Trade, even then, will not be put down. Three 
 nations have already tried the experiment of declaring 
 the Slave Trade to be piracy — Brazil, North America, 
 and England. Brazilian subjects, from the time of 
 passing the law, have been continually engaged in the 
 Slave Trade; indeed we are informed that the whole 
 population of certain districts are concerned in it, and 
 not one has suffered under the law of piracy. In 1820, 
 a law was passed by the Legislature of North America, 
 declaring that if any citizen of that country shall be en- 
 
156 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 gaged in the Slave Trade, " such citizen or person shall 
 be adjudged a pirate, and on conviction thereof, before 
 the Circuit Court of the United States, shall suffer death." 
 It will not be denied, that American citizens have been 
 largely engaged in the traffic; but I have yet to learn 
 that even one capital conviction has taken place during 
 the eighteen years that have elapsed since the law was 
 passed.* 
 
 Great Britain furnishes a still more striking illustra- 
 tion of the inefficacy of such a law. For ten years the 
 Slave Trade prevailed at the Mauritius, to use the words 
 of Captain Moresby, before the Committee of the House 
 of Commons, " as plain as the sun at noonday." Many 
 were taken in the very act, and yet no conviction, I be- 
 lieve, took place. With these examples before me, I 
 am not so sanguine as some other gentlemen appear to 
 be, as to the efficacy of a law declaring the Slave Trade 
 piracy, even if it were universally adopted. I fear that 
 such a law would be a dead letter, unless, at all events, 
 we had the bond fide and cordial co-operation of the 
 colonists. Were we able to obtain this in our own do- 
 minions? Our naval officers acted with their usual en- 
 ergy, on the coast of the Mauritius. When General 
 Hall was governor there, and when Mr. Edward Byam 
 was the head of the police, everything possible was done 
 to suppress the traffic, and to bring the criminals to jus- 
 tice. No persons could act with more meritorious fidelity 
 (and I grieve to say, poorly have they been rewarded, 
 by the Home Government ;) it became, however, but 
 too evident that the law was unavailing. The populace 
 would not betray the slave-trader, the agent of the po- 
 lice would not seize him; if captured by our officers, the 
 
 * Major M'Gregor has stated, in the letter to which I have before 
 referred, that a vessel, with 160 Africans on board, had been wreck- 
 ed at the Bahamas ; and he says, " This pretended Portuguese vessel 
 was fitted out at Baltimore, United States, having been formerly a 
 pilot-boat, called the Washington. The supercargo was an Ameri- 
 can citizen from Baltimore." See also the report of the Commis- 
 sioners, Class B, 1837, p. 125. 
 
FAILURE OF EFFORTS, ETC. 157 
 
 prisons would not hold him, and the courts would not 
 convict him. General Hall was obliged to resort to the 
 strong expedient of sending offenders of this kind to 
 England, for trial at the Old Bailey, on the ground that 
 no conviction could be obtained on the island. It is 
 clear, then, that the law making Slave Trade piracy, 
 will be unavailing, without you obtain the concurrence 
 of the colonists in Cuba and Brazil; and who is so ex- 
 travagant as to indulge the hope that this will ever be 
 attained ? 
 
 But now I will make a supposition, still more Utopian 
 than any of the preceding. All nations shall have 
 acceded to the Spanish Treaty, and that treaty shall be 
 rendered more effective. They shall have linked to it, 
 the article of piracy ; the whole shall have been clench- 
 ed, by the cordial concurrence of the authorities at 
 home, and the populace in the colonies. With all this, 
 we shall be once more defeated and baffled by contra- 
 band trade. 
 
 The power which will overcome our efforts, is the 
 extraordinary profit of the slave-trader. It is, I believe, 
 an axiom at the custom-house, that no illicit trade can 
 be suppressed, where the profits exceed 30 per cent. 
 
 I will prove that the profits of the slave-trader are 
 nearly five times that amount. " Of the enormous 
 profits of the Slave Trade," says Commissioner Ma- 
 cleay, " the most correct idea will be formed by taking 
 an example. The last vessel condemned by the Mixed 
 Commission was the Firm." He gives the cost of — 
 
 Dollars. 
 
 Her cargo . . . 28,000 
 
 Provisions, ammunition, wear 
 
 and tear, &c. . . 10,600 
 
 Wages .... 13,400 
 
 Total expense . . . 52,000 
 
 Total product . . . 145,000* 
 
 * Pari. Paper, No. 381, p. 37. 
 14 
 
158 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 There was a clear profit on the human cargo of this 
 vessel, of 18,640/., or just 180 per cent. ; and will any 
 one who knows the state of Cuba and Brazil, pretend 
 that this is not enough to shut the mouth of the inform- 
 er, to arrest the arm of the police, to blind the eyes of 
 the magistrates, and to open the doors of the prison? 
 
 Lord Howard de Walden, in a despatch to the Duke 
 of Wellington, dated 26th February, 1835, speaks of a 
 vessel just about to sail from that port (Lisbon,) on a 
 slave-trading voyage. It shows the kind of reliance 
 which we are justified in placing on the professions of 
 that country, pledged twenty years ago, " to co-operate 
 with His Brittanic Majesty in the cause of humanity 
 and justice," and •' to extend the blessings of peaceful 
 industry and innocent commerce to Africa ;" when, in 
 her own capital, under the guns of her own forts, in the 
 face of day, and before the eyes of our ambassador, a 
 vessel is permitted, without molestation, to embark in 
 the Slave Trade ; but it also exhibits the prodigious gains 
 of the man merchant. 
 
 Lord Howard de Walden says, " The subject of her 
 departure and destination have become quite notorious, 
 and the sum expected to be cleared by the parties con- 
 cerned in the enterprise, is put at 40,0007."* 
 
 Mr. Maclean, (Governor at Cape Coast Castle,) in a 
 letter addressed to me, in May, 1838, says, " A prime 
 slave on that part of the coast with which I have most 
 knowledge, costs about 50 dollars in goods, or about 
 from 25 to 30 dollars in money, including prime cost 
 and charges; the same slave will sell in Cuba for 350 
 dollars readily, but from this large profit must be de- 
 ducted freight, insurance, commission, cost of feeding 
 during the middle passage, and incidental charges, which 
 will reduce the net profit to, I should say, 200 dollars on 
 each prime slave; and this must be still further reduced, 
 to make up for casualties, to, perhaps, 150 dollars per 
 head." 
 
 * Class B. 1835, p. 27. 
 
concusiox. 159 
 
 It is remarkable that this calculation by Mr. Maclean 
 almost exactly corresponds with that stated by the Sierra 
 Leone Commissioners, giving for the outlay of 100 dol- 
 lars, a return of 280 dollars. 
 
 Once more, then, I must declare my conviction that 
 the Trade will never be suppressed by the system hither- 
 to pursued.* You will be defeated by its enormous gains. 
 You may throw impediments in the way of these mis- 
 creants; you may augment their peril ; you may reduce 
 their profits ; but enough, and more than enough, will 
 remain to baffle all vour humane efforts. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 Towards the end of the last century the cruelty and 
 the carnage which raged in Africa were laid open. 
 From the most generous motives, and at a mighty cost, 
 we have attempted to arrest this evil ; it is, however, but 
 too evident, that, under the mode we have taken for the 
 suppression of the Slave Trade, it has increased. 
 
 It has been proved, by documents which cannot be 
 controverted, that, for every village fired and every 
 drove of human beings marched in former times, there 
 are now double. For every cargo then at sea, two car- 
 goes, or twice the numbers in one cargo, wedged to- 
 gether in a mass of living corruption, are now borne on 
 the wave of the Atlantic. But, whilst the numbers who 
 suffer have increased, there is no reason to believe that 
 the sufferings of each have been abated; on the contrary, 
 we know that in some particulars these have increased ; 
 so that the sum total of misery swells in both ways. 
 
 * Mr. Maclean, in a letter dated 16th October, 1838, says. •• My 
 neighbor, (as I may call bim,) De Sooza, at Whydah, still carries 
 on an extensive Slave Trade ; judging by the great number of vessel 
 consigned to him, be must ship a vast number of slaves annually. 
 He declares, and with troth, that all the slave treaties signed during 
 the last 25 years, have never caused him to export one slave fewer 
 than he would have done otherwise." 
 
160 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 Each individual has more to endure ; and the number 
 of individuals" is twice what it was. The result, there- 
 lore, is, that aggravated suffering reaches multiplied 
 numbers. 
 
 It is hardly necessary to remind the reader that the 
 statement 1 have given of the enormities attendant on 
 the supply of slaves to the New World must, from the na- 
 ture of the case, be a very faint picture of the reality — 
 a sample, and no more, of what is inflicted and endured 
 in Africa. Our knowledge is very limited ; but few tra- 
 vellers have visited Africa — the Slave Trade was not 
 their object, and they had slender means of information 
 beyond what their own eyes furnished; yet, what do 
 they disclose 1 
 
 If Africa were penetrated in every direction by per- 
 sons furnished with the means of obtaining full and 
 correct information, and whose object was the delinea- 
 tion of the Slave Trade — if, not some isolated spots, but 
 the whole country, were examined — if, instead of a few 
 casual visitors, recording the events of to-day, but know- 
 ing nothing of what occurred yesterday, or shall take 
 place to-morrow, we had everywhere those who would 
 chronicle every slave-hunt, and its savage concomi- 
 tants ; — if we thus possessed the means of measuring 
 the true breadth and depth of this trade in blood, — is it 
 not fair to suppose that a mass of horrors would be col- 
 lected, in comparison with which all that has been hither- 
 to related would be as nothing ? 
 
 It should be borne in constant memory, difficult as it 
 is to realise — that the facts I have narrated are not the 
 afflictions of a narrow district, and of a few inhabi- 
 tants ; — the scene is a quarter of the globe — a multitude 
 of millions its population, — that these facts are not 
 gleaned from the records of former times, and preserved 
 by historians as illustrations of the strange and pro- 
 digious wickedness of a darker age. They are the 
 common occurrences of our own era — the " customs'* 
 which prevail at this very hour. Every day which we 
 
CONCLUSION. 161 
 
 live in security and peace at home witnesses many a 
 herd of wretches toiling over the wastes of Africa, to 
 slavery or death ; every night villages are roused from 
 their sleep, to the alternatives of the sword, or the flames, 
 or the manacle. At the time I am writing there are at 
 least twenty thousand human beings on the Atlantic ex- 
 posed to every variety of wretchedness which belongs 
 to the middle passage. Well might Mr. Pitt say, " there 
 is something in the horror of it which surpasses all the 
 bounds of imagination." 
 
 I do not see how we can escape the conviction that 
 such is the result of our efforts, unless by giving way 
 to a vague and undefined hope, with no evidence to 
 support it, that the facts I have collected, though true at 
 the time, are no longer a fair exemplification of the ex- 
 isting state of things. After I had finished my task, and 
 on the day when I had intended to send this work to the 
 press, I was permitted to see the most recent documents 
 relating to the Slave Trade. In these I find no ground 
 for any such consolotary surmise ; on the contrary, I 
 am driven by them to the sorrowful conviction, that the 
 year, from September, 1837, to September, 1838, is 
 distinguished beyond all preceding years for the extent 
 of the trade, for the intensity of its miseries, and for the 
 unusual havoc it makes on human life. 
 
 If I believed that the evil, terrible as it is, were also 
 irremediable, I should be more than ready to bury this 
 mass of distress, and this dark catalogue of crime, in 
 mournful silence, and to spare others, and especially 
 those who have sympathised with, and labored for, the 
 negro race, from sharing with me the pain of learning 
 how wide of the truth are the expectations in which we 
 have indulged. But I feel no such despondency ; I 
 firmly believe that Africa has within herself the means 
 and the endowments which might enable her to shake 
 off, and to emerge from, her load of misery, to the bene- 
 fit of the whole civilised world, and to the unspeakable 
 improvement of her own, now barbarous population. 
 13* 
 
162 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 This leads me to the second point, viz.: the capabilities 
 of Africa. 
 
 There are two questions which require to be decided 
 before we can assume that it is possible to extinguish the 
 Slave Trade. First, Has Africa that latent wealth, and 
 those unexplored resources which would, if they were 
 fully developed, more than compensate for the loss of 
 the traffic in man? Secondly, Is it possible so to call 
 forth her capabilities, that her natives may perceive that 
 the Slave Trade, so far from being the source of their 
 wealth, is the grand barrier to their prosperity, and that 
 by its suppression they would be placed in the best po- 
 sition for obtaining all the commodities and luxuries 
 which they are desirous to possess ? With respect to 
 the last of these propositions, I am of opinion that the 
 time has not yet arrived when it would be expedient to 
 publish, in detail, the measures which, according to my 
 view, are necessary, in order that the African may be 
 taught to explore the wealth of his exuberant soil, and 
 to enjoy the sweets of legitimate commerce. These 
 views have been communicated to Her Majesty's Go- 
 vernment. It is for them to decide how far they are 
 safe, practicable and effectual. When their decision 
 shall have been made, there will be no occasion for any 
 farther reserve. The second portion of this work will 
 then be published, in which it is my purpose to say 
 something on the geography of Africa ; something on 
 the moral degradation and cruel superstitions which 
 prevail among its population ; and something on the 
 measures necessary for elevating the native mind. To 
 these I shall add suggestions of the practical means 
 which appear to me best calculated for the deliverance 
 of Africa from the Slave Trade. 
 
 But the former question remains. Is Africa (if jus- 
 tice shall be done to her) capable of yielding a richer 
 harvest than that which has been hitherto reaped from 
 the sale and the slaughter of her people ? 
 
 VSeyond all doubt, she has within herself all that is 
 
conclusion. 163 
 
 needed for the widest range of commerce, and for the 
 most plentiful supply of everything which conduces to 
 the comfort and the affluence of man. Her soil is emi- 
 nently fertile.* Are its limits narrow? Tt stretches 
 from the horders of the Mediterranean to the Cape of 
 Good Hope, and from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean. 
 Are its productions such as we little want or lightly 
 value ? The very commodities most in request in the 
 civilised world are the spontaneous growth of these un- 
 cultivated regions. Is the interior inaccessible ? The 
 noblest rivers flow through it, and would furnish a cheap 
 and easy mode of conveyance for every article of legi- 
 timate trade. Is there a dearth of population, or is that 
 population averse to the pursuits of commerce 1 Drained 
 of its inhabitants as Africa has been, it possesses an 
 enormous population, and these eminently disposed to 
 traffic. Does it lie at so vast a distance as to forbid the 
 hope of continual intercourse. In sailing to India we 
 pass along its western and eastern coasts. In compa- 
 rison with China, it is in our neighborhood. 
 
 Are not these circumstances sufficient to create the 
 hope that Africa is capable of being raised from her pre- 
 sent abject condition, and while improving her own 
 state, of adding to the enjoyments, and stimulating the 
 commerce of the civilised world ? 
 
 It is earnestly to be desired that all Christian powers 
 should unite in one great confederacy, for the purpose 
 of calling into action the dormant energies of Africa ; 
 but if this unanimity is not to be obtained, there are 
 abundant reasons to induce this nation, alone, if it must 
 so be, to undertake the task. Africa and Great Britain 
 stand in this relation toward each other. Each possesses 
 what the other requires, and each requires what the other 
 possesses. Great Britain wants raw material, and a 
 
 * Ptolemy says it "is richer in the quality, and more wonderful 
 in the quantity of its productions, than Europe or Asia." 
 
164 THE SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 market for her manufactured goods. Africa wants 
 manufactured goods, and a market for her raw material. 
 Should it, however, appear that, in place of profit, loss 
 were to be looked for, and obloquy, instead of honor, I 
 yet believe that there is that commisseralion, and that 
 conscience in the public mind, which will induce this 
 country to undertake, and, with the Divine blessing, 
 enable her to succeed in crushing " the greatest practical 
 evil that ever afflicted mankind."* 
 
 * Mr. Pitt. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 No. 1. 
 
 We have omitted an essay appended to the British edition of 
 this woik, on " Commercial Intercourse with Africa," to make room 
 for some facts in relation to the traffic in slaves which have escaped 
 the notice of the author of this work, or have transpired since its 
 publication. We quote from the newspaper press, giving our 
 authority, and leaving our readers to judge for themselves of the 
 authenticity of the details which follow. 
 
 On the 10th of Sixth mo. (June) last, the British Brig of War 
 Buzzard, Captain Fitzgerald, brought into the port of New York, 
 two vessels taken as slavers on the African coast, both sailing 
 under American colors, and with American captains on board. 
 
 The following minute account, taken from the New York Morn- 
 ing Herald, is declared by that paper to have been obtained by a 
 very intelligent and trusty reporter, and to be in every respect 
 faithful and correct: 
 
 The Hispaxo-A:<ierica>' Slaters — Extraordinary de- 
 velopments. — This city was thruwn into a state of great excitement 
 by the arrival at quarantine, of H. B. M. brig Buzzard, with two 
 slavers as her prizes. The sensation was deepened when the 
 rumor of their being American vessels, and manned by American 
 crews, was circulated. The excitement was so great, and the 
 anxiety to learn all the facts respecting their capture increased so 
 fast that we thought it advisable to step on board the •'Teazer," 
 visit them, and gather all we could in relation to the slave-trade, 
 and the seizure of the brig Eagle, and the schooner Clara, by 
 Captain Fitzgerald, of the Buzzard. 
 
 Accordingly we took our seat in the stern sheets of the " Teazer," 
 «ave the order, " give way, my lads," and were quickly swept past 
 Governor's Isiand, and as rapidly approached Staten Island. There 
 were upwards of fifty square-rigged vessels lying at quarantine, of 
 all sizes and of all shapes, but as we neared Dr. Rockwell's pier, we 
 instantly pointed out the slavers, they carrying their trade in their 
 looks. They are long, low, sharp, piratical, black, rakish-looking 
 
166 APPENDIX. 
 
 vessels. They lay low, and their masts rake most awfully. The 
 brig has her name painted on the stern, with a large guilt spread 
 eagle beneath — the name of the port where she did belong is painted 
 out. She is a complete slaver —her slave deck is in, with space 
 only two feet and a half high, and ring bolts and manacles ready 
 for one or more hundreds of poor black wretches. Her provision 
 casks and legers were all on board when captured by the Lilv. 
 
 We will be brief with the brig, as we have before mentioned her. 
 
 She was captured by the Lily sloop of war in January last and 
 carried to Sierra Leone, where she was detained a short time, and 
 discharged by the Spanish authorities because her commander, 
 Joshua W. Littig, exhibited American papers; but her prize- 
 master, Mr. Boys, remained in her, determined to sift the matter, 
 and consequently sailed from Sierra Leone for the purpose of com- 
 municating with the British commander. When on Lagus bar, 
 she was hailed and boarded by the Buzzard, as we have already 
 stated. Mr. Boys, of course, gave her up, to his superior officer, 
 but still continued prize-master. 
 
 The Clara, commanded by Samuel B. Hooker, was captured in 
 the river Nun, by the boats of the Buzzard, early in March. To 
 show the caution with which Capt. Fitzgerald acted, we will state 
 the particulars. Understanding there was a Spanish slaver up the 
 river, he cruised at its mouth for several weeks, and daily sent 
 up boats to reconnoitre—landing Mr. Grant several times for the 
 purpose of getting information from the kings of the several African 
 hordes ; but nothing could be gleaned from them. After becoming 
 pretty well satisfied, however, that such a vessel as the Clara was 
 in the river, Captain F. despatched the yawl, manned with twelve 
 men and officers, to proceed up the Nun and take possession of her. 
 At a considerable distance up, anchored close in a bend of the river 
 they discovered and boarded her. Captain Hooker and two 
 Spaniards only were on board, the rest being on shore. Mr. Grant 
 demanded the slaver's papers, but was refused them. Captain H. 
 said he was an American, had American papers, and was not to be 
 searched. 
 
 While this was going on, one of the English officers took a spy 
 glass to scan the shore. Captain H. upon seeing this, sprang for- 
 ward, passed his hand before it, and said "You don't understand 
 this glass ; you cannot get the right focus." But the officer had 
 the right focus so nearly that he discovered the Barracoons filled 
 with negroes, and also saw on shore the slave decks, rice casks and 
 the legers. He also saw the red caps of the Spaniards peeping 
 from behind the Barracoons and over the underhush. This was 
 sufficient, and the Clara was taken as a Spanish slaver sailing 
 under false colors and papers. Having American registers, al- 
 though cut, it was a delicate matter for Capt. Fitzgerald to captur e 
 
APPENDIX. 167 
 
 them; but the registers being cut, and having a Spanish crew, he 
 thoughtbest to take her and the Eagle in charge, and bring them to 
 New York, subject to the orders of the government of the United States. 
 After leaving the coast of Africa, they touched at Havana, where 
 the slavers were owned, and a long correspondence on their capture 
 took place between Captain Fitzgerald and the Spanish owners. The 
 correspondence Capt. F. took with him to Washington yesterdav 
 morning. We shall publish it in the course of a week. It will 
 develope something that will astonish the people of this country. 
 Merchants in this city are engaged largely in this trade. 
 
 In th« meantime the Buzzard and her two prizes will remain ia 
 our harbor. The mate and steward of the Eagle, and the mate and 
 boatswain of the Clara, have also been brought here to act as 
 witnesses in case a trial should be ordered. The Spanish crews 
 were landed at Havana. The log book of the Clara is a singular 
 document. It contains a regular price current of slaves and ail 
 their transactions. This was kept by the mate against the wish of 
 Captain Hooker, and is alone sufficient to convict them. The cut 
 registers, as they are called, were obtained by both captains at 
 Havana, and, should a trial take place, some developments will be 
 made in relation to them that will be startling. 
 
 There are upwards of twenty American built vessels, officered by 
 Americans, engaged in this trade, and they have all these cut re- 
 gisters, which were obtained from the same source — and that source 
 is supposed to be the American Consulate at Havana. The 
 British cruisers have several times captured thern, but invariablv 
 gave them up upon seeing their papers. Now they are determined 
 to see if it is really true that such vessels can sail under the Ame- 
 rican flag while engaged in the slave trade, and have therefore cap- 
 tured and brought these vessels to Xew York for this purpose. 
 
 The whole affair will be laid before our government in a few 
 days, and arrangements will undoubtedly be entered into, or ought 
 to be, with the English government, in regard to the future manage- 
 meat of these important matters! 
 
 The Pennsylvania Freeman of Sixth mo. 13th, contains a letter 
 from Mitchell Thompsox, Esq. an officer on board H. B. M. ship 
 Sappho, dated Port Royal, Jamaica On the subject of the slave 
 trade, he makes the following statement : 
 
 " I have just finished a small pamphlet, on the subject of missions 
 for Africa, and the slave trade, in which I have not spared your coun- 
 try ; you aredeeply — deeply implicated. Almost half of the vessels em- 
 ployed in this trade, and furnished to either the Spaniards or Portu- 
 guese, are from America, and seem to have been built at Baltimore, 
 from which place they sail, chartered for some port in Cuba, with 
 
163 APPJBWD1X. 
 
 lumber, which lumber is converted into slave decks, on their arrival 
 at the destined port. To this is now added coppers, casks and food 
 with the necessary slave irons, and now also is added the requisite 
 number of Spaniards, as part complement of the ship's company. 
 With American papers and flag, they escape our cruisers, as the 
 accession to the right of mutual search has not been made by Ame- 
 rica. Thus they proceed to the coast, where at Cape de Verd, 
 Prince's, or St. Thomas's, papers and flag are changed for Portu- 
 guese, or if not, the vessel makes the effort on her own responsi- 
 bility. To show that this is the case, in the month of September 
 last we gave chase to and boarded the Dolphin schooner, Captain 
 Spright, from Baltimore, (last from Havana,) with slave-irons, 
 coppers, casks, decks, &c, crew part American and part Spanish, 
 having American papers, and flag. He knew he was safe, and said 
 immediately that he was fur the coast. Since we saw you we have 
 taken seven or eight hundred slaves, and we learn from the cap- 
 tains that Texas is the best mart." 
 
 The writer further states that a short time before the date of his 
 letter (March 27th.) the Sappho captured a cargo of slaves, one of 
 whom was a native American, and who was sold to the slave traders 
 at or near Liberia. 
 
 In this connection we copy from a late London paper the follow- 
 ing extract from a letter of an officer on Board the British man-of- 
 war Pelica ", now engaged in efforts to prevent the slave trade. It 
 is enough to make an American hang his head for shame. 
 
 '■The Portuguese schooner Magdalena, which we lately captured, 
 had on board 320 slaves. The captain of this vessel informed us 
 that an American schooner, the Octavia, of Baltimore, under 
 Spanish colors, having been sold to a Spaniard in the river Nun, 
 had sailed on the same day that he did, with 220 slaves, and that 
 they had parted company only the preceding night. We made 
 all sail in the supposed direction of the Octavia, and captured her 
 the next day at noon. She had 220 slaves and a crew of 13 men. 
 Both of our prizes had very fair slave decks, two feet and a half in 
 height, and the negroes were all pretty healthy. They were sent 
 to Sierra Leone. The Dolphin took possession of five beautiful 
 empty brigs the other day at Lagos, and sent them to Sierra Leone. 
 The only flag under which slavery can be actually carried on with 
 impunity, is the American ! 
 
 "(Thus a vessel is built or fitted out in an American port, gets 
 American papers, runs to Cuba, is sold ; the American with a mixed 
 crew, and the Spanish captain as passengers, run her across to the 
 West Coa6t of Africa under American colors, and, as we are not 
 
APPENDIX. 169 
 
 allowed by the jealous Yankees to search their vessels, she remains 
 at anchor until the slaves are ready ; a fictitious bill of sale is made 
 out, by which the Spaniards or Portuguese become purchasers of 
 the vessel, and the Yankee a passenger ; a favorable opportunity pre- 
 sents itself, the slaves are shipped under the Portuguese flag, and 
 then the vessel takes her chance of escape. The Octavia had no 
 papers except a bill of sale of the above description, and hoisted the 
 Spanish flag merely because the captain was a Spaniard. The 
 American who sold the Octavia was a passenger in the Magdalena." 
 
 No. 2. 
 
 THE FOREIGN SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 Three years ago, in the Senate of the United States, John C 
 Calhoun expressed his regret that the laws of the United States had 
 branded the foreign slave trade as piracy. This was on the ground 
 of principle — the clear and discriminating mind of the South 
 Carolinian Senator could discern no moral difference between the 
 legal slave trade carried on with Yirginia, and the illegal one be. 
 tween the African coast and Xew Orleans. He is a free trade 
 advocate, and this prohibition of the foreign trade has notoriously been 
 as advantageous to the negro-growers of Yirginia and Maryland, as 
 the restrictive system was to the manufacturers of New England, 
 It seems by the the following article, which we find going the 
 rounds of our daily papers, that he is not alone in his opinion, and 
 that there is a probability that a serious effort will ere long be made 
 .•either to annex Texas to the Union, or to repeal the laws against 
 the foreign slave trade." 
 
 The Slave Trade between Cuba and Texas. — A report in circu- 
 lation in Louisiana, that Texas was receiving slaves from Africa, 
 via Cuba, has created some feeling among the planters of Louisiana. 
 The complant is, that if the fertile lands of Texas can be cultivated 
 by slaves purchased for less than five hundred dollars, the planters 
 will in time be enabled to ruin those here who have paid one thou- 
 sand or fifteen hundred dollars for a field hand. The Xew Orleans 
 Courier makes the following interesting comment upon the subject. 
 
 X. York Express. 
 
 15 
 
170 APPENDIX. 
 
 " It is now well known to those who have taken the trouble to in- 
 quire into the matter, that the slave trade from Africa is more ex- 
 tensive than ever it was. One of the most violent opponents of the 
 trade, a member of the British parliament, by the name of Buxton, 
 has recently published a work upon the subject, in London. In 
 this work Mr. Buxton gives it as his opinion that the African trade 
 has derived strength from the very attempts made by the English 
 government to suppress it. He says, and produces facts in support 
 of what he says, that the millions of money spent on the English 
 cruisers, and the thousands of valuable lives which have been sacri- 
 ficed in them to the climate, during the last thirty two years, have 
 only tended to make the trade more demoralizing and cruel in its 
 tendencies, without at all diminishing the number of slaves carried 
 from Africa to America. 
 
 If such have been the results produced by the injudicious efforts 
 of the English philanthropists, we may well doubt the policy of the 
 law of Congress, which has prohibited the importation of slaves from 
 Africa — a policy that, by all we can learn, has no other effect than 
 to cause the planter of Louisiana to pay to the Virginia slaver one 
 thousand dollars for a negro, which now, in Cuba, and by and by in 
 Texas, may be bought for half the money. 
 
 It is known to those acquainted with the character of the African 
 that he is more patient and less unruly than the Virginia, or Mary- 
 land negro — his very ignorance of many things makes him less dan- 
 gerous in a community like ours, and his constitution is better 
 suited to our climate. In transporting him from his own country, 
 his position, too, in civilization is bettered, not worsted. 
 
 The more we examine and reflect on the policy the Texians are 
 likely to pursue in this matter, openly or covertly, the more we are 
 convinced that Texas should be annexed to the Union, or else Con- 
 gress should repeal the law prohibiting the importation of slaves 
 from Africa. Otherwise, the culture of sugar and cotton in 
 Louisiana will suffer greatly by the cheaper labor which planters of 
 Cuba and Texas can and will employ." 
 
 No. 3. 
 
 The following is an extract from an able work recently published 
 by Judge Jay, entitled, "A View of the Action of the Federal Go- 
 vernment, in regard to Slavery." 
 
 "The great struggle for the abstract principles of human liberty, 
 in which our fathers engaged with so much zeal, had, at the 
 
APPENDIX. 171 
 
 close of the revolutionary war, excited a very general conviction 
 of the injustice of slavery. When the convention appointed to 
 form a Federal Constitution assembled, the northern and many of 
 the southern delegates were disposed to give the new government 
 such unqualified power over the commerce of the nation, as would 
 enable it to abolish a traffic no less at variance with our republican 
 professions than with the precepts of humanity and religion. A 
 portion of the southern delegates, however, insisted on a temporary 
 restriction of this power as the price of their adhesion to the Union ; 
 and their threat of marring the beauty, symmetry, and strength of 
 the fair fabric about to be erected, by withdrawing from it the sup- 
 port of the States they represented, unfortunately induced the con- 
 vention to yield to their wishes, and to insert in the Constitution a 
 clause restraining Congress from abolishing the African slave trade 
 for twenty years. Mr. Madison has left us the following history of 
 this iniquitous clause. "The Southern States would not have en- 
 tered into the union of America without the temporary permission 
 of that trade. The gentlemen from South Carolina and Georgia, 
 argued in this manner — ' We have now liberty to import this 
 species of property, and much of the property now possessed has 
 been purchased, or otherwise acquired in contemplation of improv- 
 ing it by the assistance of imported slaves. What would be the 
 consequence of hindering us from it? The slaves of Virginia 
 would rise in value, and we should be cbliged to go your markets. ' " — 
 Debates in Virginia Convention. 
 
 We have here the solution of much contradictory action on the 
 part of slaveholders in regard to this trade. It seems to have been 
 early discovered that its abolition would be advantageous to the 
 slave-breeders, but not to the slave-buyers. Owing to climate, soil, 
 and production, slave labor is less profitable in Maryland and Vir- 
 ginia, than in the more Southern States; hence, the greater demand 
 for this labor in the latter States has, since the cessation of import- 
 ation, caused a constant influx of slaves from the former. The 
 breeders in Maryland and Virginia have, for the most part, striven 
 in good faith for the total suppression of the African trade ; while 
 those who originally refused to enter the Unionun less permitted, 
 for at least twenty years, to import their slaves directly from Africa, 
 have since evinced very little desire to secure to their neighbors the 
 monopoly of the market. 
 
 Whenever the opponents of abolition find it convenient to refer 
 to the action of the Federal Government on the subject of slavery, 
 they laud and magnify its horror of the African slave trade, and 
 exultingly point to the law of Congress, branding it with the penal- 
 ties of piracy. And yet we are inclined to believe, thatthe conduct 
 of our government in relation to this very subject, is one of the 
 
172 APPENDIX. 
 
 foulest stains attached to our national administration. Has the 
 trade been suppressed? Has the Federal Government in good faith 
 endeavored to suppress it! These are important questions, and we 
 shall endeavor to solve them by an appeal to facts and official docu- 
 ments. 
 
 In a debate in Congress in 1819, Mr. Middleton, of South Caro- 
 lina, stated that, in his opinion, 13,000 Africans were annually smug- 
 gled into the United States. Mr. Wright, of Viriginia, estimated the 
 number at 15,000 ! The same year, Judge Story of the Supreme 
 Court of the United States, in a charge to a Grand Jury, thus ex- 
 presses himself: — " We have but too many proofs from unquestion- 
 able sources, that it (the African trade) is still carried on with all 
 the implacable ferocity and insatiable rapacity of former times. 
 Avarice has grown more subtle in its evasions, and watches and 
 seizes its prey with an appetite quickened rather than suppressed by 
 its guilty vigils. American citizens are steeped to their very mouths, 
 (I can scarcely use too bold a figure,) in this stream of inquity." 
 
 On the 22d Jan. 1811, the Secretary of the Navy wrote to the 
 commanding naval officer at Charleston : " I hear, not without 
 great concern, that the law prohibiting the importation of slaves, has 
 been violated in frequent instances, near St. Mary's, since the 
 gun-boats have been withdrawn from that station." 
 
 On the 14th March, 1814, the Collector of Darien, Georgia, thus 
 wrote to the Secretary of the Treasury: — " I am in possession of 
 undoubted information, that African and West India negroes are 
 almost daily illicitly introduced into Georgia, for sale or settlement, 
 or passing through it to the territories of the United States, for similar 
 purposes. These facts are notorious, and it is not unusual to see 
 such negroes in the streets of St. Mar}% and such, too, recently cap- 
 tured by our vessels of war, and ordered for Savannah, were il- 
 legally bartered by hundreds in that city, for this bartering (or bond' 
 ing, as it is called, but in reality selling') actually took place before 
 any decision has passed by the Court respecting them. I cannot 
 but again express to you, sir, that these irregularities, and mocking 
 of the laws by men who understand them, are such that it requires 
 the immediate interposition of Congress to effect the suppression of 
 this traffic ; for as things are, should a faithful officer of the Govern- 
 ment apprehend such negroes, to avoid the penalties imposed by 
 the laws, the proprietors disclaim them, and some agent of the Ex- 
 ecutive demands a delivery of the same to him, who may employ 
 them as he pleases, or effect a sale by way of bond for the restora- 
 tion of the negroes when legally called on so to do, which bond is 
 understood to be forfeited, as the amount of the bond is so much 
 less than the value of the property. After much fatigue, peril, and 
 expense, eighty-eight Africans are seized and brought to the Sur- 
 
APPENDIX. 173 
 
 veyor to Darien ; they are demanded by the Governor's agent. 
 Notwithstanding the knowledge which his Excellency had that 
 these very Africans were some weeks within six miles of his Ex- 
 cellency's residence, there was no effort, no stir made by him, his 
 agents or subordinate State officers, to carry the laws into execu- 
 tion ; but no sooner than it was understood that a seizure had been 
 effected by an officer of the United States, a demand is made for 
 them; and it is not difficult to perceive, that the very agressors may, 
 by a forfeiture of the mock bond, be again placed in possession of 
 the smuggled property." 
 
 In 1817, General David B. Mitchell, Governor of Georgia, re- 
 signed the Executive chair, and accepted the appointment under 
 the Federal Government, of Indian Agent at the Creek Agency. 
 He was afterwards charged with being concerned, in the winter of 
 1817 and 1818, in the illegal importation of Africans. The docu- 
 ments in support of the charge, and those also which he offered to 
 disprove it, were placed by the President in the hands of Mr. Wirt, 
 the Attorney General of the United States, who on the 21st Jan- 
 uary, 1821, made a report on the same. From this report, it ap- 
 pears that no less than 94 Africans were smuggled into Georgia, 
 and carried to Mitchell's residence. Mr. Wirt concludes his report 
 with the expression of his conviction, thaf'General Mitchell is guilty 
 of having prostituted his power as Agent for Indian Affairs at the 
 Creek Agency, to the purpose of aiding and assisting in a conscious 
 breach of the Act of Congress of 1807, in prohibition of the slave 
 trade, and this from mercenary motives."* 
 
 On the 22d May, 1817, the Collector at Savannah wrote to the 
 Secretary of the Treasury : " I have just received information from a 
 source on which I can implicitly rely, that it has already become 
 the practice to introduce into the State of Georgia across St. Mary's 
 River, from Amelia Island, andE. Florida, Africans who have been 
 carried into the port of Ferdinanda. It is further understood, that 
 the evil will not be confined altogether to Africans, but will be ex- 
 tended to the worst cl«ss of West India slaves." 
 
 Captain Morris of the Navy, informed the Secretary of the Navy, 
 (18th June, 1817) — " Slaves are smuggled in through the numerous 
 inlets to the westward, where the people are but loo much disposed 
 to render every possible assistance Several hundred slaves are 
 now at Galveston, and persons have gone from New Orleans to 
 purchase them." 
 
 On the 17th April, 1818, the Collector at New Orleans wrote to 
 the Secretary of the Treasury : " No efforts of the officers of the 
 Customs alone, can be effectual in preventing the introduction of 
 
 * Senate papers, 1st Session, 17th Cong. No. 93. 
 
 15* 
 
174 APPENDIX. 
 
 Africans from the westward : to put a stop to that traffic, a naval 
 force suitable to those waters is indispensable ; and>essels captured 
 with slaves ought not to be brought into this port, but to some other 
 in the United States, for adjudication^ -1 We may learn the cause 
 of this significant hint, from a communication made the 9th July, 
 in the same year, to the Secretary, by the Collector at Nova Iberia. 
 " Last summer I got out State warrants, and had negroes seized to the 
 number of eighteen, which were part of them stolen out of the 
 custody of the coroner , the balance were condemned by the Dis- 
 trict Judge, and the informers received their part of the nett pro- 
 ceeds from the State Treasurer. Five negroes that were seized 
 about the same time, were tried at Opelousa in May last, by the 
 judge. He decided that some Spaniards that were supposed to have 
 set up a sham claim, stating that the negroes had been stolen from 
 them on the high seas, (! !) should have the negroes, and that the 
 persons who seized them should pay half the costs, and the State 
 of Louisiana the other. This decision had such an effect as to 
 render it almost impossible for me to obtain any assistance in that 
 part of the country." 
 
 The Secretary of the Treasury, in a letter to the Speaker of the 
 House of Representatives, 20th January, 1819, remarked: — "It is 
 understood that proceedings have been instituted under the State 
 authorities which have terminated in the sale of persons of color 
 illegally imported into the States of Georgia and Louisiana, during 
 the years 1817 and 1818. There is no authentic copy of the acts 
 of the Legislatures of these States upon this subject in this depart- 
 ment, but it is understood that in both States, Africans and other 
 persons of color, illegally imported, are directed to be sold fob. the 
 
 BENEFIT OF THE STATE.* 
 
 We have now, we think, proved from high authority, that not- 
 
 * In 1835, the New "York Journal of Commerce asserted that vessels had 
 been recently fitted out in that port for the African slave trade. 
 
 The Boston Express of 17th December, 1838. thus gives the substance of 
 the statements made by Mr. Elliott Cresson, ot the Pennsylvania Coloniza- 
 tion Society, in a public address delivered a few days before in Boston-. — 
 
 "Out of 177 slave ships which arrive at Cuba every year, five-sixths are 
 owned and fitted out from ports in the United States; and the enormous 
 profits accruing from their voyages remitted to this country. One house in 
 New York received lately for its share alone the sum of g250,000. Baltimore 
 is largely interested in this accursed traffic as well as New York— and evtn 
 Boston, with all l'.er religion anil morality, does not disdain to increase her 
 wealth by a participation in so damnable a business. A gentleman of the 
 highest respectability lately informed Mr. Cression that a sailor in this city 
 told him that he had received several hundred dollars of hush money to 
 make him keep silent, and when he mentioned the nanus of his employers, 
 the gentleman says he was actually afraid to repeat them, so high do they 
 stand in society. A captain in the merchant service from New York, was 
 lately offered his own terms by two different houses, piovided he would un- 
 dertake a slave voyage," 
 
APPENDIX. 175 
 
 withstanding the legal prohibition of the slave trade, the people, the 
 Courts, and the Executive authority in the planting States, have 
 afforded facilities for the importation of Africans It now becomes 
 important to inquire how far the Federal Government has enforced 
 the penalties imposed by the Act forbidding the trade. 
 
 On the 7th January, 1819, Joseph Xourse, Register of the Trea- 
 sury, in an official document submitted to Congress, certified that 
 there were no records in the Treasury department of any forfeitures 
 under the Act of 1807, abolishing the slave trade! So that not- 
 withstanding the thirteen or fifteen thousands slaves said by south- 
 ern members of Congress to be annually smuggled into the United 
 States— notwithstanding American citizens were declared by a 
 Judge of the Supreme Court to be "steeped to their very mouths in 
 this'stream of iniquity," not one single forfeiture had, in eleven years, 
 reached the Treasury of the United States ! Mr. Noorae, however, 
 states, that it was understood that that there had been recently two 
 forfeitures, one in South Carolina, and the other in Alabama. 
 Respecting the first, we have no information; of the latter, we are 
 able to present the following extraordinary history. 
 
 The Collector at Mobile, writing Nov. 15, 1818, to the Secre- 
 tary of the Treasury, remarks, "Should West Florida, be given up 
 to the Spanish authorities, both the American and Spanish vessels, 
 it is to be apprehended, will be employed in the importati n of 
 slaves with an ultimate destination to this country ; and even in its 
 present situation, the greatest facilities are afforded for obtaining 
 slaves from Havana and elsewhere through West Florida. Three 
 vessels, it is true, were taken in the attempt last summer, but this 
 was owing rather to ace dent than any well-timed arrangement to 
 prevent the trade." 
 
 These three vessels brought in 107 slaves. By what mistake 
 they were captured we are not informed, but another letter from the 
 Collector shows us how the "accident" was remedied. "The 
 vessels and cargoes and slaves have been delivered on bonds ; the 
 former to the owners, and the slaves to three other persons. The 
 Grand Jury found true bills against the owners of the vessels, mas- 
 ters and supercargo — all of whom have been discharged — why or 
 wherefore, I cannot say, except that it could not be for want of 
 proof against them." From this letter it is most probable that the 
 forfeiture of which Mr. Xourse had heard, if any in fact occurred, 
 was the collusive forfeiture of the Bonds." 
 
 We most freely acknowledge that so far as the statute book is to 
 be received as evidence, there can be no question of the sincerity and 
 
 * The documents we have quotf d on this subject, are to be found in Re- 
 ports of Committees — 1st Stss. 2lst Cong. No. 348. 
 
176 APPENDIX. 
 
 zeal with which the Federal Government has labored to suppress 
 the African slave trade: but laws do not execute themselves, and 
 we shall now appeal to the statute book, and to the minutes of Con- 
 gress, to convict the Government of gross hypocrisy and duplicity. 
 It is difficult to understand why men who are engaged in breed- 
 ing slaves for the market, or why men who are employed in buying 
 and working slaves, should have any moral or religious scruples 
 about the African trade ; and when we find political leaders pro- 
 fessing to be ready to sacrifice the Union to secure the perpetuity of 
 the American trade, we may surely be excused for doubting the 
 sincerity of their denunciations against the foreign traffic. 
 
 In the year 1817, a new and sudden zeal was excited in Con- 
 gress for the abolition of the trade, and this zeal, as we shall see, was 
 the offspring of the efforts of Virginia to colonize the free blacks. 
 The Legislature of that State had for years been anxious to get rid, 
 not of the slaves, but of the free negroes. On the 1st January, 
 1817, the Colonization Society, the result of Virginia policy, was 
 organized a tWashington, and immediately presented" a memorial to 
 Congress praying for national countenance. The committee to 
 whom this memorial was referred, reported (11th Feb.) two resolu- 
 tions:— 1st, Calling on the President to enter into negotiations with 
 foreign powers for the "entire and immediate abolition of the traffic 
 in slaves;" and 2nd, asking him to obtain the consent of Great 
 Britain to our colonizing free people of color at Sierra Leone. Thus 
 early was the cause of colonization connected with the agitation in 
 Congress about the s'ave trade ; a connexion from which, as we 
 shall presently see, the Society reaped a very large pecuniaiy ad- 
 vantage. The resolutions were not acted on, and the next session, 
 Mr. Meuceh, regarded in Virginia as the father of the Society, suc- 
 ceeded in getting a vote of the House (Dec. 30th, 1817,) instruct- 
 ing the committee on the mem' rial from the Society, to report on 
 the expediency of rendering the laws against the slave trade more 
 effectual. Of this committee Mr. Mercer was himself the chairman; 
 and he recommended in his report, that the President should take 
 measures for procuring suitable territory in Africa for colonizing 
 free people of color with their own consent; and that armed vessels 
 should occasionally be sent to Africa for the purpose of interrupting 
 the trade. The suggestions of the committee were not adopted, but 
 the ensuing session, (3d March, 1819,) a new act against tie slave 
 trade was passed, which gave " a local habitation" to the present 
 colony of Monrovia; and was equivalent to a liberal and national 
 grant to the Society. By this act, the President was authorized to 
 restore to their country, such Africans as might be captured on board 
 of slavers, or illegally introduced into the United States, and he 
 was to appoint agents on the coast to receive them. Mr. Monroe, 
 
APPENDIX. IT? 
 
 then President of the United States, was a zealous colonizationist, 
 and was afterwards placed at the head of the Society. Let us see 
 what use he made of the powers entrusted to him by the act of 1819. 
 Many years after, an inquiry was instituted in Congress as to the 
 expenditures under this law, and the Secretary of the Navy (1830) 
 reported "252 persons* of this description (recaptured Africans,) 
 have been removed to the settlement provided by the Colonization 
 Society on the coast of Africa ; and there had been expended there- 
 for, the sum of two hundred and sixty-four thousand seven hun- 
 dred and ten dollars. * * * The practice has been to furnish 
 these persons with provisions for a period of time after being landed 
 in Africa, varying from six months to one year ; to provide them 
 with houses, arms, and ammunition; to pay for the erection of for- 
 tifications, for the building of vessels for their use, and in short to 
 render all the aid rehired for the founding and support of a 
 colonial establishment. 
 
 A report from Amos Kendall, Fourth Auditor of the Treasury, 
 discloses more particularly the manner in which the "Act in addi- 
 tion to the Acts prohibiting the slavelrade^ was made subservient 
 to the purposes of the Colonization Society. 
 
 "In May, 1822, the Secretary of the Navy directed that ten libe- 
 rated Africans should be delivered to Mr. J. Ashtnun for transporta- 
 tion to Africa. The Secretary authorized him to take out at the 
 expense of the Government, 15,003 hard brick, 5,000 feet of assort- 
 ed timber, 30 barrels of ship bread, eight of tar, four of pitch, four 
 of r jsin, and two of turpentine. ***** 
 
 In the simple grant of power to an agent to receive recaptured ne- 
 groes, it requires broad construction to find a grant of authority to 
 colonize them, to build houses for them, to furnish them with farming 
 utensils, to pay instructers to teach them, to purchase ships for 
 their commerce, to build forts for their protection, to supply them 
 with arms and munitions, and to employ the army and navy in 
 their defence."! 
 
 It cannot be denied that the friends of colonization had great 
 
 * We have not been able to ascertain from what source these Africans 
 were obtained, but that they were not all of them trophies of the zeal of our 
 cruisers in the cause of humanity, appears from the following extracts from 
 official documents. '' There are now in the charge of the Marshal of 
 Georgia, 248 Africans ta*en out of a South American privateer, the "Gene- 
 ral Ramirez, - ' whose creio mutinied, and brought the vessel into St. Mary's, 
 Georgia.— Letter of Secretary of Navy, 7th February, 1821. " A decision of 
 the Supreme Court in the case of the ' General Ramirez,' placed under the 
 control of the Government from 125 to 130 Africans, who were brought into 
 Georgia, and arrangements are making to send them to the Agency"-* 
 (Liberia.; — Report of Secretary of Navy, Dec. 2d, 1825. 
 
 t Senate Documents, 2 Sess. 2 Cong. 
 
178 APPENDIX. 
 
 encouragement to proceed in their warfare against the slave trade. 
 Accordingly, Mr. Mercer, as the chairman of the committee to whom 
 a memorial from the Society had been referred, reported (May 9th, 
 182J,) a Bill incorporating the Society, and another making the 
 slave trade piracy ,• and likewise two resolutions, — the first re- 
 questing the President to negotiate with foreign powers, "on the 
 means of effecting an entire and immediate abolition of the slave 
 trade ,•" and another requesting him to make such use of the pub- 
 lic armed vessels as may aid the efforts of the Colonization Society. 
 The first resolution was adopted, and the consideration of the other 
 postponed. A few days after, (May 15th,) the Act making the 
 African slave trade piratical, was passed. But laws do not execute 
 themselves : and if any slave trader has suffered death in the 
 United States as a pirate, we confess our ignorance of the fact* 
 
 It certainly required some little assurance in the House of Repre- 
 sentatives, thus to order a negotiation with foreign powers, for the 
 suppression of the trade, wdien the Federal Government had itself 
 been so remiss in its efforts, that both Houses of the British Par- 
 liament had, the year before, (July, 1819,) addressed the Prince 
 Regent, praying him to renew "his beneficent endeavors, more 
 especially with the Governments of France and the United Stales 
 of America, for the effectual attainment of an object we all pro- 
 fess to have in view :" and a negotiation had already been actually 
 commenced with our Government, proposing to concede "to each 
 other's ships of war, a qualified right of search, with a power of 
 detaining the vessels of either State, with slaves actually on 
 board. -f and a positive refusal to this proposal had already been 
 returned. There is no evidence that our Government ever took a 
 single measure in consequence of this resolution ; and under all 
 the circumstances of the case, it is not uncharitable to believe, that 
 it was intended to save appearances. 
 
 We must now beg the reader's attention to a new act, in this 
 farce of suppressing the slave trade. 
 
 In 1814, our government concluded a war with Great Britain, 
 
 * In 1820, a slave vessel, tlie Science, fitted out at New York, and com- 
 manded by Adolphe Lneoste, of Charleston, South Carolina, was captured 
 on the coast of Africa, by the United States ship Cyane, and Lacoste sent 
 home for (rial. The trial took place in the Circuit Court of the United 
 States, b fore Judge Story. The evidence was full and unequivocal; La- 
 coste was convicted, and sentenced to five years' imprisonment, anil to the 
 payment of a fine of £3.000. Had the crime been committed a few months 
 later, the penalty would have been death, under the new law declaring the 
 trade piracy. Lacoste received a full pardon from the President, and the 
 reader may thence judge, whether, had he been convicted as a pirate, his 
 lite would have been much in danger. The reasons assigned for the pardon, 
 were youth, previous good character, and an aged mother.— Nites's Register, 
 Apr it' 20, 1822. 
 
 t Letter from Lord Castlercagh to Mr. Rush, June 20, 1818. 
 
APPENDIX. 179 
 
 and in the treaty of peace, gave its assent to the following article. 
 "' Whereas the traffic in slaves is irreconcilable with the principles 
 of humanity and justice; and whereas His Majesty and the United 
 States are desirous of continuing their efforts to promote its entire 
 abolition, it is hereby agreed, that both the contracting parties shall 
 use their best endeavors to accomplish so desirable an object." 
 
 On the 29th January, 1823, Mr. Stratford Canning, the British 
 Minister at Washington, addressed a letter to the Secretary of State, 
 reminding him of this pledge, and calling on the American Govern- 
 ment either to assent to the plan proposed by Great Britain, or to 
 suggest some other efficient one in its place. After the reception 
 of this letter, and before the return of an answer, the following 
 resolution was passed (28th Feb.) by the House of Representa- 
 tives, viz. 
 
 " Resolved, that the President of the United States be requested 
 to enter upon and prosecute from time to time, such negotiations 
 with the several maritime powers of Europe and America, as he 
 may deem expedient, for the effectual abolition of the African slave 
 trade, and its ultimate denunciation us piracy, under the laws of 
 nations, by the consent of the civi ized world?' 
 
 The British Minister was then informed, in answer to his letter, 
 that the plan proposed by the United States was a mutual stipula- 
 tion to annex the penalty of piracy to the offence of participating 
 in the trade, by the citizens and subjects of the two parties. Mr. 
 Canning replied, that " Great Britian desires no other, than that 
 any of her subjects who so far defy the laws, and dishonor the 
 character of their country as to engage in a trade of blood, pro- 
 scribed not more by the act of the Legislature, than by the national 
 feeling, should be detected and brought to justice even by foreign 
 hands, and from under the protection of her flag." He neverthe- 
 less urged a limited concession of the right of search, as the only 
 practical cure of the evil; and he communicated the fact, that so 
 late as January, 1822, it was stated officially by the Governor of 
 Sierra Leone, "that the fine rivers of Xunez and Pongas were en- 
 tirely under the control of renegade European and American slave 
 traders." He then proposed that a mutual right of search should be 
 conceded, to be confined to a fixed number of cruisers on each 
 side ; to be restricted to certain parts of the ocean ; and that to pre- 
 vent abuses, these cruisers should act under regulations prepared 
 by mutual consent ; and moreover, that this concession should be 
 made only for a short time, that if found inconvenient in practice, 
 it might be discontinued.* 
 
 But the Republic stood on its dignity, and would not condescend 
 
 * Letter from Mr. Statford Canning to the Secretarv of State, l8th April, 
 1823. 
 
180 APPENDIX. 
 
 to yield a concession which Great Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, 
 the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, and Sardinia, have thought it 
 no degradation to make in the cause of humanity. 
 
 But still the American Government was very anxious that every 
 man of every nation, who engaged in the traffic of slaves on the 
 coast of Africa, (not in the District of Columbia,) should be hung 
 by the neck till he was dead ; and forthwith, in obedience to the 
 resolution of 28th February, despatches were forwarded to the 
 Cabinets of France, Spain, Portugal, Russia, the Netherlands, 
 Buenos Ayres, and Colombia, announcing the desire of the United 
 States to declare the trade piracy, by the common consent of na- 
 tions. 
 
 It is generally understood, that a pirate is an enemy to the hu- 
 man race, and may be put to death by any government in whose 
 hands he may chance to fall. If this was not the purport of the 
 proposition of the House of Representatives, that the trade should be 
 denounced " as piracy under the laws of nations, by the consent 
 of the civilized world" we may well ask, what did it mean ? 
 
 On the 24th June, 1823, instructions were forwarded to our 
 Minister in England, authorizing him to conclude a treaty with 
 Great Britian on the subject of the slave trade, on certain conditions. 
 "The draft of a convention," says the Secretary of State, "is 
 herewith enclosed, which, IF the British Government should agree 
 to treat upon this subject, on the basis of a legislative prohibition 
 of the slave trade by both parties under the penalties of piracy, 
 you are authorized to propose and conclude." 
 
 Now it should be remembered that at this time the trade was not 
 piratical by the British laws, and che English Ministry could not 
 make it so by treaty. We therefore proposed a condition with 
 which possibly they might not have it in their power to comply. 
 The ministry, however, when made acquainted with the condition, 
 felt confident of the acquiescence of Parliament. "The British 
 Plenipotentiaries, says Mr. Rush, in his letter to the Secretary of 
 State, "gave their unhesitating consent to the principle of denounc- 
 ing the traffic as piracy, provided we could arrive at a common mind 
 on all the other parts of the plan proposed." 
 
 The treaty, nearly verbatim, with the draft sent from Washington, 
 was signed at London on the 13th March, 1824; and a few days 
 afterwards, according to a previous understanding, and in fulfil- 
 ment of the co?idition exacted by us, Parliament passed an Act, 
 declaring that all British subjects found guilty of slave trading, 
 " shall suffer death without benefit of clergy, and loss of lands, 
 goods and chatties, as pirates, felons and robbers upon the seas, 
 ought to suffer. 
 
 This treaty provided in substance, that the cruisers of either party 
 
APPENDIX. 181 
 
 on the coast of Africa, America, and the West Indies, might seize 
 slaves under the flag of the other, and send them home to the 
 country to which they belonged, where they should be proceeded 
 against as pirates, So that in fact, the whole concession made by 
 us to Great Britain, amounted to no more than permitting her to 
 arrest our pirates, and to deliver them to our courts for trial ; and 
 in return, she granted us precisely the same right with respect to her 
 pirates. 
 
 The treaty was submitted of course to the Senate for ratification, 
 which, under the circumstances of the case, one would think, must 
 have followed as a matter of course. The Senate, however, thought 
 otherwise. The treaty was laid before them on the 30th of April, 
 but as they delayed to act upon it, the British Minister at Washing- 
 ton became uneasy, and on the 16th of ?vlay, addressed a letter to 
 the Secretary of State, complaining of the postponment of the rati- 
 fication, especially as the project of the convention had originated 
 with the United States ; and as Great Britain " had not hesitated a 
 minute to comply with the preliminary act desired by the President," 
 the legislative prohibition of the slave trade under the penalties of 
 piracy." 
 
 The President naturally feeling his own good faith compromitted 
 by the hesitation of the Senate, now sent them a confidential mes- 
 sage, urging the ratification of the treaty. He remarked that the re- 
 jection of the treaty would subject the Executive, Congress, and the 
 Nation, " to the charge of insincerity respecting the great result of 
 the final suppression of the slave trade. To invite all nations with 
 the statute of piracy in our hands, to adopt its principles as the law 
 of nations, and yet to deny to all the common rights of search for 
 the pirate, whom it would.be impossible to detect without entering 
 and searching the vessel, would expose us not simply to the charge 
 of inconsistency." 
 
 The Senate, after long debates, finally ratified the treaty, in a 
 mutilated form. They struck out the word, "America," in the 
 clause authorizing the seizure of slavers on " the coasts of Africa, 
 America, and the West Indies." They also expunged the articles 
 applying the provisions of the treaty to vessels chartered, as well 
 as owned by the citizens or subjects of either party ; and to the citi- 
 zens or subjects of either party carrying on the trade under foreign 
 flags; and they added an article authorizing either party to terminate 
 the treaty at any time, on giving six months notice. 
 
 It will have been observed from the documents we have quoted, 
 that the slaves imported into the United States, have been chiefly 
 introduced through the Spanish possessions on our southern fron- 
 tiers ; slavers direct from Africa, rarely having the hardihood to en- 
 ter our ports, and discharge their cargoes ; while small vessels from 
 16 
 
182 APPENDIX. 
 
 the West Indies, have occasionally found their way into the south- 
 ern waters. Of course the treaty as altered by the Senate, would 
 afford but little interruption to this mode of stocking the plantations 
 of Louisiana and the neighboring states. 
 
 As chartered vessels were excepted, our traders would only have 
 to hire slavers instead of owning them, to be exempted from the 
 hazard of being arrested and sent home for trial, by British officers; 
 oreven, if on board their own vessels, by running up a foreign flag, 
 thev would escape the penalties of piracy. 
 
 The British Cabinet refused to agree to the treaty thus despoiled 
 of all its efficiency ; but with wonderful simplicity, they proposed to 
 restrict the right of search on the coast of 'America, to the coast of 
 the southern states. This proposition was of course, promptly re- 
 jected by our Minister in England. 
 
 The British Government, vainly cherishing the hope, that the 
 United States might still consent to some combined effort to destroy 
 a trade they professed to abhor, offered, through their Minister at 
 Washington, to consent to a treaty, word for word, the same as the 
 one the Senate had ratified, with the single exception of restoring 
 the word, " America." To this, Mr. Clay, then Secretary of State, 
 replied, that " from the views entertained by the Senate, it would 
 seem unnecessary and inexpedient any longer to continue the 
 negotiation respecting the slave convention, with any hope that it 
 can assume a form satisfactory to both parties. That a similar con- 
 vention had been formed with Colombia, on the 10th December, 
 1824, excepting that the coast of America was excepted from its 
 operation ; and yet, notwithstanding this conciliatory feature, the 
 Senate had by a large majority refused to ratify it.'"* 
 
 Negotiations have since been renewed on this subject^; and France 
 has united with Great Britain, in urging the Cabinet at Washington 
 to co-operate with them in putting an end to the African slave 
 trade. The correspondence has not been made public, but we learn 
 from the Edinburgh Review, for July, 1836, that the final answer 
 of the American Government [is, that " under no condition, in no 
 form, and with no restriction, will the United States enter into 
 any convention, or treaty, or combined efforts of any sort or kind 
 with other nations, for the suppression of this trade." 
 
 To our readers we leave the task of making their own comments 
 on this history of duplicity and hypocrisy ; and proceed to other 
 details. 
 
 On the 2d November, 1825, the Colombian Minister at Wash- 
 
 • The documents quoted on this subject, may be found in State Papers, 
 1st Sess. 19 Cong. vol. 1. And in Reports of Committees, 1st Sess. 21 Coiijj. 
 vol.3. No. 348. 
 
APPENDIX. 183 
 
 ington, in the name of his Government, invited the United States to 
 send delegates to a Congress of the South American Republics, to 
 be held at Panama. In enumerating the topics , to be discussed in 
 theproposed Congress, he remarked: " The consideration of means 
 to be adopted for the entire abolition of the African slave trade, is a 
 subject sacred to humanity, and interesting to the police of the 
 American States. To effect it, their energetic, general, and uniform 
 co-operation is desirable. At the proposition of the United States, 
 Colombia made a convent' on with them on this subject, which has 
 not been ratified by the Government of the United Stales. Would 
 that America which does not think politic what is unjust, contribute 
 in union, and with common consent, to the good of Africa !" 
 
 This document was submitted to the Senate, and on the 16th 
 January, 18S;6, a committee of the Senate made a report in relation 
 to it, in wmich they observe : u The United States have not certain- 
 ly the right, and ought never to feel the inclination to dictate to 
 others who may differ with them on this subject," (the slave trade,) 
 "nor do the committee see the expediency of insulting other states 
 by ascending the moral chair, and proclaiming from thence mere 
 abstract principles, of the rectitude of which each nation enjoys the 
 perfect right of deciding for itself." 
 
 The remarks on this occasion by Mr. White, a Senator from 
 Tennessee, are worthy of observation. " In these new States (the 
 S. American Republics,) some of them have put it down in their 
 fundamental law, ' that whoever owns a slave shall cease to be a 
 citizen.' Is it then fit that the United States should disturb the 
 quiet of the southern and western states upon any subject connect- 
 ed with slavery ! I think not. Can it be the desire of any pro- 
 minent politician in the United States, to divide us into parties upon 
 the subject of slavery? I hope not. Let us then cease to talk 
 about slavery in this House ; let us cease to negotiate upon any 
 subject connected with it." 
 
 We have seen most abundantly, that slaveholders have no objec- 
 tion to talk about slavery in Congress, or to negotiate about it with 
 foreign nations, when the object is to guard their beloved institution 
 from danger. It is only on the abominations of the system, and the 
 means of removing it, that every tongue must be mute, and the 
 Federal Government passive." 
 
184 APPENDIX. 
 
 No. 4. 
 
 The following article was published in the New York Com- 
 mercial Advertiser of the 26th of Seventh mo. (July,) 1839. 
 
 American Slavers. — We have a volume of official documents 
 printed by order of the British Parliament, and containing, in part 
 the correspondence of the British government and its diplomatic and 
 other officers, upon the subject of the slave trade — including also 
 portions of correspondence with other governments between the 2d 
 of February and 3d of May of the present year. A portion of the 
 volume is devoted to the United States; and of this we lay before 
 our readers an abstract. 
 
 The first letter is from Lord Palmerston to Mr. Fox, enclosing 
 one from Commander Kellet, of H. B. M. brig Brisk, to Rear 
 Admiral Elliott, informing him that in July, 1839, he had boarded the 
 schooner Mary Hopper, of Philadelphia, on the coast of Africa, 
 under the American flag, but having on board nine passengers, 
 Spaniards and Portuguese, with a Spaniard as supercargo, and con- 
 signed to a notorious slave trader at the Gallinas. Commander 
 Kellett had no doubt that the brig had Portuguese papers, but as 
 she was under the American flag, he did dot feel justified in making 
 search for them. 
 
 Next follows a despatch from Lord Palmerston to Mr. Fox, en- 
 closing a report from H. B. Majesty's commissioners, at Havana, 
 by which it appears that no less than 19 American vessels were en- 
 gaged in the year 1838, in carrying on the Cuba slave trade. 
 
 Then a despatch from Lord Palmerston to Mr. Fox, dated 
 March 22, 1839, including papers received at the Admiralty, show- 
 ing that the American consul at Havana, (Mr. Trist,) had affixed 
 his name to the papers of vessels about to be employed in the slave 
 trade, and had also signed blank forms, to be filled up at pleasure 
 by persons in command of those vessels. 
 
 The papers referred to are, 1, a despatch from Rear Admiral 
 Elliott, commander-in-chief on the African station, to the Lords 
 Commissioners of the Admiralty 
 
 2. A letter from Commander Kellett to Rear Admiral Elliott, 
 dated Sierra Leone, August 8, 1838, stating that he had boarded 
 the Portuguese schooner Senhora de Bon Viagem, from Havana, 
 found her papers signed by the American consul at Havana, with 
 the reasons assigned therefor that there was no Portuguese consul at 
 that port. 
 
 3. A list of vessels engaged in the slave trade, which have been 
 searched and detained by British vessels on the African station, be- 
 
APPENDIX. 185 
 
 tween October 1st and December 31st, 1838 . Among these vessels 
 was the schooner Constitucao, under Portuguese colors, from 
 Havana, with papers signed by Mr. Trist, and also blank papers 
 signed by him, to be filled up as occasion might require. She had 
 no slaves on board, but slave irons, plank, for slave deck, large coppers, 
 and other slaving equipments. 
 
 Then comes a letter from Lord Palmerston to Mr. Fox, with en- 
 closures, the principal of which are — 
 
 1. A letter from Lt. Com. Birch, of H. B. M. brig Wizard, dated 
 off Bahia, 12th November, 1838, to Commodore Sullivan, stating 
 that on the 16th of September he had boarded the schooner Eagle, 
 of Baltimore, under American colors and papers. Lt. Birch there- 
 fore did not think himself justified in searching her, although it was 
 alleged that she had landed slaves to the Northward of Bahia. On 
 the 19th of October following she sailed for Africa. 
 
 2. Another letter from Lt. Com. Birch to Commodore Sullivan, 
 dated as the former, stating that the American brig Dido, of Balti- 
 more, Philips, master, left Havana in March, 183', with a general 
 slave cargo; touched at Port au Prince and Bonavista, where the 
 usual sham sale to a Portuguese was effected, and Portuguese pa- 
 pers were obtained; thence proceeded to the Bight of Benin and 
 took on board five hundred and seventy-five slaves, with which she 
 sailed for Bahia. On nearing that port it was seen that H. B. M. 
 sloop-of-war Sparrowhawk was lying there, upon which the Dido 
 hauled off, hoisting American colors. The same evening the 
 slaves were landed, the brig put up to rights, and the next day she 
 came into the harbor of Bahia under American colors. There was 
 a Portuguese named Manuel on board, who figured as supercargo 
 when the brig was under American colors, and as master when 
 under Portuguese; Philips, the American master, then representing 
 himself as supercargo. The Dido was under Portuguese co- 
 lors on the coast of Africa — under American at Bahia. She 
 sailed again for the coast of Africa on the 27th of July. One of 
 her crew, James Fox,, subsequently entered on board the Wizard, 
 and declared his readiness to make oath to the facts above stated. 
 He had seventy-five dollars a month as wages, and one hundred 
 dollars bounty when the slaves were landed. 
 
 3. Another letter from Lieut. Com Birch to Commodore Sulli- 
 van, dated on board the Wizard, off Bahia, December 20, 1838, 
 stating that on the 10th he boarded the schooner Mary Lushing, of 
 Baltimore, Reynolds, master, under American colors, with a 
 Spanish and Portuguese crew, from the coast of Africa, bound for 
 Bahia. It was well known at Bahia that she had been sold at 
 Havana for the slave trade, retaining her American papers and 
 master. She had been to the coast of Africa for slaves, but was 
 
18G APPENDIX. 
 
 there so closely watched by one of the British cruisers, that after a 
 stay of some weeks, the attempt to get slaves on board was given 
 up, and she sailed for Bahia in ballast. She was shortly to sail 
 again for Africa. 
 
 The master observed to the boarding officer that if there had been 
 slaves on board he would not have seen the American colors up. 
 
 Then follow two letters from Lord Palmerston to Mr. Fox, in- 
 structing him to call the attention of the United States government 
 to the conduct of Mr. Trist, in officiating as Portuguese consul at 
 Havana ; and to urge the necessity either of entering into some 
 convention by which British cruisers should be enabled to capture 
 slaving vessels under the American flag, or of stationing American 
 vessels of war on the coast of Africa for the suppression of the slave 
 trade under that flag. 
 
 Next comes a letter from Sir John Barrow, enclosing six others. 
 1. From Lt. Reeve, of H. B. M. sloop-of-war Lily, announcing the 
 capture of the American brig Eagle, sailing under American colors 
 but with a Spanish crew, and her release by the Court at Sierra 
 Leone because her papers were American. When captured she 
 was last from Havana, and was believed to be the same vessel for- 
 merly reported to the Admiralty under the name of the Tres Ami- 
 gos, under Portuguese colors, and employed in the slave trade. 
 She was sold at Havana, and Mr. Trist attested the sale and grant- 
 ed American papers. Three other vessels had been captured and 
 released, under like circumstances, one of which was subsequently 
 recaptured, with slaves on board. Lt. Reeve concludes his letter 
 by saying, "No other flag but the American will be seen on the 
 coast in a short time, for it affords all the protection a slaver re- 
 quires, under the existing laws." 
 
 2. From Rear Admiral Elliott to Mr. Wood, from which the 
 following are extracts: 
 
 " Several of the slave dealers have declared their intention to 
 have an American sailing master in each vessel, and American 
 colors, and some have had the impudence to assert that the govern- 
 ment of the United States would not discountenance such practices 
 by any act of agreement which could prevent such gross abuse of 
 the American flag." 
 
 " The probable object of using the American flag will be to pro- 
 tect the vessels up to the time of the cargo being ready for ship- 
 ment, then to go through the farce of selling the vessels to a Portu- 
 guese or Spaniard. But in case of capture with slaves on board, 
 under the American flag, I should beg to know what is to be done 
 with the man passing for the American captain." 
 
 " The actual sale of nearly all the slave vessels in question takes 
 place at Havana, where one man is engaged to personify an Ameri- 
 
APPENDIX. 187 
 
 can captain ; but they seem very indifferent as to having any pre- 
 tended American papers. The mere flag, in their opinion, is suf- 
 ficient, and as they are also provided with the proper national flag, 
 they are prepared in case of meeting with an American vessel of 
 war." 
 
 3. A letter from Lt. Kellet to Rear Admiral Elliott, dated on 
 board H. B. M. brig Brisk, Sierra Leone, October 29, 1838, an- 
 nouncing the capture of the schooner Mary Ann Cassard, under 
 American colors. She belonged to Gilbert Cassard, of Baltimore, 
 and had been sold at Matanzas. She had no American papers but 
 the roll, which was signed by the U. S. consul at Matanzas. The 
 crew consisted of Spaniards; the master was an Englishman but call- 
 ed himself an American. 
 
 4. From Lt. Keilett to the same, calling attention to the case of 
 the American schooner Mary Hopper, above stated. She had 
 Portuguese and American papers — the latter to be used if overhauled 
 by a British, the former if by an American vessel of war. 
 
 5. From Capt. Popham, of the sloop-of-war Pelican, mentioning 
 the case of the ship Venus, of Baltimore, an exceedingly fast sailer, 
 which arrived at Lagos from Boston on the 5th of November, 1838 
 — took in a large cargo of slaves, said to amount to 1150, being 
 protected by the American flag and papers while taking the slaves 
 on board, and hoisting the Portuguese flag when she sailed. The 
 Pelican chased, but could not overtake her. 
 
 At Lagos the Pelican boarded a large American brigantine, dis- 
 charging a cargo for the purchase of slaves. 
 
 Subsequently the Pelican boarded a Portuguese slave schooner, 
 on board which was an American named Huntington, who had 
 sold the American schooner Ontario to a Spaniard at Brass, and 
 was going home. The Ontario wbs protected by the American 
 flag, but was subsequently captured by the Pelican, being then un- 
 der Spanish colors, with 220 slaves on board. She had no papers. 
 The letter concludes as follows: — 
 
 " It has been stated by Spaniards and Portuguese slaving on this 
 coast, that were it not for the active co-operation of the Americans 
 the slave trade would materially decline. I do not doubt, from all 
 I hear that the citizens of the United States, (generally of Baltimore,) 
 are more deeply interested in the slave trade to Havana and Brazil 
 than is generally supposed." 
 
 6. Extract from a letter from Rear Admiral Elliott to Mr. Wood, 
 dated February 13, 1839. 
 
 Of American flags used for this purpose there are more than 
 twice as many at present on the coast ; and in so barefaced a manner 
 do they proceed, that some have not even one American to person- 
 ify the captain, but satisfy themselves with furnishing one of the 
 
188 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 crew with a certificate of naturalization for the occasion. If Her 
 Majesty's ships were at liberty to send some of these pretended 
 Americans to the United Slates, and the government of that country 
 were to uphold the honor of their flag by subjectng such lawless 
 felons to prosecution and punishment, it would soon put an 
 end to the nefarious usurpations of their flag by the most notorious 
 slave dealers belonging to Spain and Portugal. 
 
 7. Letter from Lt. Holl to Rear Admiral Elliott, stating that, on 
 the 23d of January, 1839, he boarded a fast new Baltimore schooner, 
 in ballast, evidently intended for the slave trade. Crew Spanish, 
 the captain a Frenchman, naturalized a citizen of the United States. 
 American papers. 
 

 
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