t (in by far the greater number of
instances) any approach to sympathy or grateful feeling. This alone,
without taking into consideration the outrages inflicted on the race by
their cruel oppressors, supplies a sufficient cause for such a tendency,
if every other were wanting.

Passing through the principal street the day before I left St Louis, an
assembly of men, chiefly overseers and negro dealers, who stood at the
entrance of a large store, attracted my attention. Large placards, with
a description of various lots of negroes to be submitted to public
competition, soon told me I should now be able to gratify my curiosity
by witnessing a Missouri slave-vendue. A man with a bell, which he rang
most energetically at the door, shortly after summoned the company, the
auction being about to commence. On a table inside, a negress, of a
little over middle age, was standing, vacantly gazing with grief-worn
countenance on the crowd that now thronged to the table. On the floor
stood two children, of about the ages of ten and thirteen respectively.
The auctioneer, with the customary volubility of such men in America,
began by stating, that the lots now to be offered were the remnants of a
preceding sale, which he gratuitously observed had been a most
satisfactory one, and after dilating with some energy on the good
qualities of the woman before us, whose face brightened up a little on
hearing such a flattering account of her good qualities, he earnestly
requested a bidding. The poor creature was evidently in ill-health.
After the most revolting questions had been put to her, and her person
examined by the competitors with disgraceful familiarity, she was
pronounced all but worthless, "used up," as one of the company observed,
and was, after much demur on the part of the auctioneer, knocked down
for two hundred dollars; this sum being, as he remarked, but the moiety
of what she ought to have realized. She was then roughly told to get off
the table, and take her stand near it, at a place pointed out by her
purchaser, who was a rollicking-looking, big-whiskered fellow, with an
immense Leghorn hat, the brim of which was lined with black, and having
a broad black ribbon round the crown. As the poor woman got down, she
cast a furtive glance at her children, who, although the auctioneer
certainly tried to prevent it, were sold to two individuals, neither of
whom was the purchaser of the parent. The poor woman looked about in
great desp