the
large number of 'game uns' on both sides and in the adjacent country,
will be prolonged no doubt a _fourth_. To prevent confusion and
promote 'sport,' the Pit will be enclosed and furnished with _seats_;
so that those having a curiosity to witness a species of diversion
originating in a better day (for they had no rag money then,) can have
_that_ very _natural_ feeling gratified.
"The Petersburg Constellation is requested to copy."
_Horse-racing_ too, as every body knows, is a favorite amusement of
slaveholders. Every slave state has its race course, and in the older
states almost every county has one on a small scale. There is hardly a
day in the year, the weather permitting, in which crowds do not
assemble at the south to witness this barbarous sport. Horrible
cruelty is absolutely inseparable from it. Hardly a race occurs of any
celebrity in which some one of the coursers is not lamed, 'broken
down,' or in some way seriously injured, often for life, and not
unfrequently they are killed by the rupture of some vital part in the
struggle. When the heats are closely contested, the blood of the
tortured animal drips from the lash and flies at every leap from the
stroke of the rowel. From the breaking of girths and other accidents,
their riders (mostly slaves) are often thrown and maimed or killed.
Yet these amusements are attended by thousands in every part of the
slave states. The wealth and fashion, the gentlemen and _ladies_ of
the 'highest circles' at the south, throng the race course.
That those who can fasten steel spurs upon the legs of dunghill fowls,
and goad the poor birds to worry and tear each other to death--and
those who can crowd by thousands to _witness_ such barbarity--that
those who can throng the race-course and with keen relish witness the
hot pantings of the life-struggle, the lacerations and fitful spasms
of the muscles, swelling through the crimsoned foam, as the tortured
steeds rush in blood-welterings to the goal--that such, should look
upon the sufferings of their slaves with, indifference is certainly
small wonder.
Perhaps we shall be told that there are thronged race-courses at the
North. True, there are a few, and they are thronged chiefly by
_Southerners_, and 'Northern men with _Southern_ principles,' and
supported mainly by the patronage of slaveholders who summer at the
North. Cock-fighting and horse-racing are "_Southern_ institutions."
The idleness, contempt of labor, dissip
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