A voyage to the
Canaries with fish was commonly prolonged to the west coast of Africa,
where slaves were bought with rum. Thence the vessel would proceed to the
West Indies where the slaves would be sold, a large part of the purchase
price being taken in molasses, which, in its turn, was distilled into rum
at home, to be used for buying more slaves--for in this traffic little of
actual worth was paid for the hapless captives. Fiery rum, usually
adulterated and more than ever poisonous, was all the African chiefs
received for their droves of human cattle. For it they sold wives and
children, made bloody war and sold their captives, kidnapped and sold
their human booty.

Nothing in the history of our people shows so strikingly the progress of
man toward higher ideals, toward a clearer sense of the duties of humanity
and the rightful relation of the strong toward the weak, than the changed
sentiment concerning the slave trade. In its most humane form the thought
of that traffic to-day fills us with horror. The stories of its worst
phases seem almost incredible, and we wonder that men of American blood
could have been such utter brutes. But two centuries ago the foremost men
of New England engaged in the trade or profited by its fruits. Peter
Fanueil, who-built for Boston that historic hall which we call the Cradle
of Liberty, and which in later years resounded with the anti-slavery
eloquence of Garrison and Phillips, was a slave owner and an actual
participant in the trade. The most "respectable" merchants of Providence
and Newport were active slavers--just as some of the most respectable
merchants and manufacturers of to-day make merchandise of white men,
women, and children, whose slavery is none the less slavery because they
are driven by the fear of starvation instead of the overseer's lash.
Perhaps two hundred years from now our descendants will see the
criminality of our industrial system to-day, as clearly as we see the
wrong in that of our forefathers. The utmost piety was observed in setting
out a slave-buying expedition. The commissions were issued "by the Grace
of God," divine guidance was implored for the captain who was to swap
fiery rum for stolen children, and prayers were not infrequently offered
for long delayed or missing slavers. George Dowing, a Massachusetts
clergyman, wrote of slavery in Barbadoes: "I believe they have bought this
year no less than a thousand negroes, and the more they buie, the bette