Slavery As It Is: Views Of J. K. Paulding, When Untram: Eled...

Hon. James K. Paulding, late Secreta - ry of the Navy of the United States, n hi3 "Letters from the South" publiahed in 1817, relates the following: "At one of the taverns along the road we were set down in the same room with an elderly man and a youth who seomed to be well acquainled with him, for they converged familiarly and with true republican independence - for they did not mind who heard them. From the tenor of his conversation I was induced to look parlicularly at the eider. He was telling the youth something liko the following detested tale. Ho was going, it seem3, to Richmond, to inquireabout a draft for seven thouaand dollars which he had sent by mail, but which, not having beeu acknowledged by his correspondent, he was afraid had been stolen, and the money received by tho thic-f. 4I sbould not Hke to loose it,' said he, 'for I worked hard for it, and sold many a poor d lof a blackto Carolina anl Georgia, to j gelher.' Ho then went on to teil many a j perfidious tale. All along the road it seems that ho made ithis business to enquire where lived a man who might be tempted to become a party in this accursed traffic, and when he had got some half dozen of these poor creatures,he tied their hands behind their backs, and drove them three or four hundred miles or more, bare headed and half nakod through the burning southern sun. Fearful that even southern humanity would revolt at such an exhibition of human misery and human barbarity, hegave out that they were runaway alavés he was carrying home to their masters. On one occasion a poor black woman exposed this fallacy,nnd told the slory of her t;eing kidnapped, and when he got her into a wood out of hearing, he beat her,tousehis own exprèssinn 'till her back was white.'1 It seems he married all the men and woman he bought, himself, because they would sell beller for being man and wife! But,said the youth were you not afraid, in travelling through the wild country and slceping in lone houses, these slaves would rise and kill you? 'To be suro I was,' said the oiher, but I always fastened my door, put a chair upon a table before.it, so that it might wake me in falling, and slept with a loaded pistol in each hand. It was a bad life, and I loft it off as soon as I could live without it; many is the time I have separated wives from husbands, and husbands from wives, and parenis from children, but then I made them amends by marrying them again as soon as I had a chance, that is to say, I made them cali each other man and wifc, and sleep togethcr, which is quite enough for negroes. 1 made one bad purchase though,' continued ho. 'I bought a young mulatto girl, a lively creature, a great bargain. She had been the favorite of her raaster, who had lately marned. The difficuky was to get her to go, for the poor creature loved her master. However, I swore most bittcrly Í was only going to take her to her mother'a at . and she went wilh me, though she seemed to doubt me very much. But when she discovered that we were out of the state, I thoughtshe would go mad, and in fact the next nightshe drowned herself in the river close by. I lost a good five hundred dollars by this foolish trick.' Vol. 1 p. 121. V In the first volume of his work, page 128, Mr. P. gives the following description:"Thesun was shining out very hot- and in turning the angle of the road, we encountered tho following group.-first a little cart drawn by one horse, in which five or six half naked black chüdren wcre turn bied like pigs together. The cart Imd no covering, and they seemcd lo have been broiled to sleep. Behind (he cart marched ihree black women, with head, neck, and breast uncovered, and without shoes orstockings; next came three men, bareheaded, aud chained together with an oxchain. Last of all, carne a white rnan on horseback, carryinghis pistols in his belt, and who aa we passed him had the impudence to look us in the face without blush ing. At a house where we sloped a little furlher on, we Iearncd tliat he had bought these miserable creatures in Mary land, and was marching them in thicmanner to one of the more Southern States. Sharae on the State of Maryland! and I aay shame on the State of Virginia! and every State through which this wretched cavalcade was permiited to pass! I do say, that when they (tho slaveholders) permit such flagrant and indecent outrages upon humanity as that which I have described; when they sanction a villain in marching half naked women and men, loaded with chaina, without being charged with any crime but that of being black, from one section of the United States to another, hundreds of miles in the face of day, thoy disgrace themselves, and the country to