The New Hampshire Gazette

Thoughts on Slave Trade— No. II.

THESE inhuman wretches landed, afford to the attentive spectator a full view of the depravity of the human heart when untutored by virtue. No sooner landed than they repair to those whom partial fortune and the God of war have elevated over numbers of their fellow men, whom they keep in bondage. (We shall at some future period endeavour to trace the origin of those wars which the poor deluded Africans continually carry on amongst themselves.) Thither they repair and make a traffic with them by giving a few gaudy toys as an equivalent for the liberty and happiness of intelligent beings—of man, "created in the image and after the likeness of God." Deluded, heedless mortals! is it thus you bestow your time and talents? but more of this hereafter.

Should these markets not be stored with a sufficient supply for their present wants, (as these unfeeling wretches term it) different modes must be adopted—various ways essayed to remove these inconveniences. They now use every art and guile to ensnare the poor African from his humble, but peaceful cot; who, unconscious of the hard fate which awaits him, surrenders himself an easy prey to his seducers, and finds, but alas! too late, the perfidy of the tendered friendship. Loaded with chains and hurried in the vessel's hold—his mind agitated by the severest pangs, and at a loss to account for these outrages and conscious of having perpetrated nought to deserve this cruel treatment, now hopes that it is all a dream and that a period will soon be put to his sufferings; then beholding anew his chains and no longer doubting, he expostulates with those who have loaded him with them—he sets forth his innocence in the most empathetic strain and begs, (for what is his by the law of God and nature) he begs to be restored to his liberty! But these monsters, though prizing their own, are deaf to these appeals, and often when the suppliants continue to press them by intreaties to yield, they add to injustice inhumanity, by applying the lash and inflicting the severest punishments and tortures.

The African's soul bleeds within him—his heart is rent by anguish, and finding all his efforts to soften his betrayers; of no avail, he entreats as the dearest wish of his heart, to be allowed to take a last farewell of his native home and to bid adieu to the partner of his toil and the pledges of their mutual affection—to shed a last tear upon the parental bosom—to embrace once more a respected friend. But incapable of a refined sentiment and insusceptible of those feelings which constitute the good man's, the christian's superlative happiness, and in which consists the beauty of the heart of man, they are deaf to the calls of woe—the cries of the agonized and tortured soul is music to their ears, and they rear their heads in triumph, and exult in the midst of desolations at which the sympathising heart shudders, and at which human nature revolts! If art does not avail, when every disguise and all fraud prove abortive—when the African sagaciously avoids the snares and traps which are laid and prepared for him, force, compulsory means are made use of. To particularise the accompanying scenes is needless, for every intelligent being knows to what length the vicious and inhuman wretch will go when actuated by ambition. Thus wherever they bend their steps, desolation walks before them and bleeding humanity groans beneath the weight of oppression, and is overpowered by the burden of its accumulated woes.