rs. Lucy M. Downman, of Sussex county, Va."
Multitudes of advertisements like the above appear annually in the
southern papers. Reader, look at the preceding list--mark the
unfeeling barbarity with which their masters and _mistresses_ describe
the struggles and perils of sundered husbands and wives, parents and
children, in their weary midnight travels through forests and rivers,
with torn limbs and breaking hearts, seeking the embraces of each
other's love. In one instance, a mother torn from all her children and
taken to a remote part of another state, presses her way back through
the wilderness, hundreds of miles, to clasp once more her children to
her heart: but, when she has arrived within a few miles of them, in
the same county, is discovered, seized, dragged to jail, and her
purchaser told, through an advertisement, that she awaits his order.
But we need not trace out the harrowing details already before the
reader.
Rev. C.S. RENSHAW, of Quincy, Illinois, who resided some time in
Kentucky, says;--
"I was told the following fact by a young lady, daughter of a
slaveholder in Boone county, Kentucky, who lived within half a mile of
Mr. Hughes' farm. Hughes and Neil traded in slaves down the river:
they had bought up a part of their stock in the upper counties of
Kentucky, and brought them down to Louisville, where the remainder of
their drove was in jail, waiting their arrival. Just before the
steamboat put off for the lower country, two negro women were offered
for sale, each of them having a young child at the breast. The traders
bought them, took their babes from their arms, and offered them to the
highest bidder; and they were sold for one dollar apiece, whilst the
stricken parents were driven on board the boat; and in an hour were on
their way to the New Orleans market. You are aware that a young babe
_decreases_ the value of a field hand in the lower country, whilst it
increases her value in the 'breeding states.'"
The following is an extract from an address, published by the
Presbyterian Synod of Kentucky, to the churches under their care, in
1835:--
"Brothers and sisters, parents and children, husbands and wives, are
_torn asunder_, and permitted to see each other no more. These acts
are DAILY occurring in the midst of us. The _shrieks_ and the _agony,
often_ witnessed on such occasions, proclaim, with a trumpet tongue,
the iniquity of our system. _There is not a neighborhood_ where these
heart-
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