he punctilios of the arrangement, for my very soul was sick. My
landlady was sister to the man who owned the drove; and from her I
learned that he had, a few days previous, bought a negro-woman, who
refused to go with him. A blow on the side of her head with the butt of
his whip, soon brought her to the ground; he then tied her, and carried
her off. Besides those I saw, about thirty negroes, destined for the
New-Orleans market, were shut up in the Paris jail, for safe-keeping."

But Washington is the great emporium of the internal slave-trade! The
United States jail is a perfect storehouse for slave merchants; and
some of the taverns may be seen so crowded with negro captives that
they have scarcely room to stretch themselves on the floor to sleep.
Judge Morrel, in his charge to the grand jury at Washington, in 1816,
earnestly called their attention to this subject. He said, "the
frequency with which the streets of the city had been crowded with
manacled captives, sometimes even on the Sabbath, could not fail to
shock the feelings of all humane persons; that it was repugnant to the
spirit of our political institutions, and the rights of man; and he
believed it was calculated to impair the public morals, by familiarizing
scenes of cruelty to the minds of youth."

A free man of color is in constant danger of being seized and carried
off by these slave-dealers. Mr. Cooper, a Representative in Congress
from Delaware, told Dr. Torrey, of Philadelphia, that he was often
afraid to send his servants out in the evening, lest they should be
encountered by kidnappers. Wherever these notorious slave-jockeys appear
in our Southern States, the free people of color hide themselves, as
they are obliged to do on the coast of Africa.

The following is the testimony of Dr. Torrey, of Philadelphia, published
in 1817:

"To enumerate all the horrid and aggravating instances of man-stealing,
which are known to have occurred in the State of Delaware, within the
recollection of many of the citizens of that State, would require a
volume. In many cases, whole families of free colored people have been
attacked in the night, beaten _nearly_ to death with clubs, gagged and
bound, and dragged into distant and hopeless captivity, leaving no
traces behind, except the blood from their wounds.

"During the last winter, the house of a free black family was broken
open, and its defenceless inhabitants treated in the manner just
mentioned, except, that