where it is claimed they are so well off. My master once owned a beautiful
girl about twenty-four. She had been raised in a family where her mother
was a great favourite. She was her mother's darling child. Her master was
a lawyer of eminent abilities and great fame, but owing to habits of
intemperance, he failed in business, and my master purchased this girl for
a nurse. After he had owned her about a year, one of his sons became
attached to her, for no honourable purposes; a fact which was not only
well-known among all of the slaves, but which became a source of
unhappiness to his mother and sisters.

The result was, that poor Rachel had to be sold to "Georgia." Never shall
I forget the heart-rending scene, when one day one of the men was ordered
to get "the one-horse cart ready to go into town;" Rachel, with her few
articles of clothing, was placed in it, and taken into the very town where
her parents lived, and there sold to the traders before their weeping
eyes. That same son who had degraded her, and who was the cause of her
being sold, acted as salesman, and bill of saleman. While this cruel
business was being transacted, my master stood aside, and the girl's
father, a pious member and exhorter in the Methodist Church, a venerable
grey-headed man, with his hat off, besought that he might be allowed to
get some one in the place to purchase his child. But no; my master was
invincible. His reply was, "She has offended in my family, and I can only
restore confidence by sending her out of hearing." After lying in prison a
short time, her new owner took her with others to the far South, where her
parents heard no more of her.

Here was a girl born and reared under the mildest form of slavery. Her
original master was reputed to be even indulgent. He lived in a town, and
was a high-bred gentleman, and a lawyer. He had but a few slaves, and had
no occasion for an overseer, those negro leeches, to watch and drive them;
but when he became embarrassed by his own folly, the chattel principle
doomed this girl to be sold at the same sale with his books, house, and
horses. With my master she found herself under far more stringent
discipline than she had been accustomed to, and finally degraded, and sold
where her condition could not be worse, and where she had not the least
hope of ever bettering it.

This case presents the legitimate working of the great chattel principle.
It is no accidental result--it is the fruit of the t