as white as snow. In the rear of all came a light
covered vehicle, with the master and mistress of the party. Along the
roadside, scattered at intervals, we observed the male slaves trudging in
front. At the top of all, against the sky line, two men walked together,
apparently hand in hand pacing along very sociably. There was something,
however, in their attitude, which seemed unusual and constrained. When
we came nearer, accordingly, we discovered that this couple were bolted
together by a short chain or bar riveted to broad iron clasps secured in
like manner round the wrists. 'What have you been doing, my boys,' said our
coachman in passing, 'to entitle you to these ruffles?' 'Oh, sir,' cried
one of them quite gaily, 'they are the best things in the world to travel
with.' The other man said nothing. I stopped the carriage and asked one of
the slave drivers why these men were chained, and how they came to take the
matter so differently. The answer explained the mystery. One of them, it
appeared, was married, but his wife belonged to a neighboring planter, not
to his master. When the general move was made the proprieter of the female
not choosing to part with her, she was necessarily left behind. The
wretched husband was therefore shackled to a young unmarried man who
having no such tie to draw him back might be more safely trusted on the
journey."[20]

[Footnote 20: Basil Hall, _Travels in North America_ (Edinburgh, 1829),
III, 128, 129. _See also_ for similar scenes, Adam Hodgson, _Letters from
North America_ (London, 1854), I, 113.]

Timothy Flint wrote after observing many of these caravans: "The slaves
generally seem fond of their masters, and as much delighted and interested
in their migration as their masters. It is to me a very pleasing and
patriarchal sight."[21] But Edwin L. Godkin, who in his transit of a
Mississippi swamp in 1856 saw a company in distress, used the episode as a
peg on which to hang an anti-slavery sentiment: "I fell in with an emigrant
party on their way to Texas. Their mules had sunk in the mud, ... the
wagons were already embedded as far as the axles. The women of the party,
lightly clad in cotton, had walked for miles, knee-deep in water, through
the brake, exposed to the pitiless pelting of the storm, and were now
crouching forlorn and woebegone under the shelter of a tree.... The men
were making feeble attempts to light a fire.... 'Colonel,' said one of them
as I rode past, 'this is t