ion within the cotton and cane-growing region, the
grain-growing States of Delaware, Maryland and Virginia having become
to a considerable extent breeding farms. Particularly was this the
case with the more intelligent and higher developed individual slaves
who appeared near the border line. The master felt that such persons
would soon make their escape by way of the "Underground Railroad" or
otherwise, and hence in order to prevent a total loss, would follow
the dictates of business prudence and sell his bright slave man to
Georgia. The Maryland or Virginia slave who showed suspicious
aspirations was usually checked by the threat, "I'll sell you to
Georgia;" and if the threat did not produce the desired reformation it
was not long before the ambitious slave found himself in the gang of
that most despised and most despicable of all creatures, the Georgia
slave-trader. Georgia and Canada were the two extremes of the slave's
anticipation during the last decade of his experience. These stood as
his earthly Heaven and Hell, the "Underground Railroad," with its
agents, conducting to one, and the odious slave-trader, driving men,
women and children, to the other. No Netherlander ever hated and
feared the devil more thoroughly than did the slaves of the border
States hate and fear these outrages on mankind, the kidnapping
slave-traders of the cotton and cane regions. I say kidnapping, for I
have myself seen persons in Georgia who had been kidnapped in
Maryland. If the devil was ever incarnate, I think it safe to look for
him among those who engaged in the slave-trade, whether in a foreign
or domestic form.

Nothing is more striking in connection with the history of American
Slavery than the conduct of Great Britain on the same subject. So
inconsistent has this conduct been that it can be explained only by
regarding England as a conglomerate of two elements nearly equal in
strength, of directly opposite character, ruling alternately the
affairs of the nation. As a slave-trader and slave-holder England was
perhaps even worse than the United States. Under her rule the slave
decreased in numbers, and remained a savage. In Jamaica, in St.
Vincent, in British Guiana, in Barbadoes, in Trinidad and in Grenada,
British slavery was far worse than American slavery. In these colonies
"the slave was generally a barbarian, speaking an unknown tongue, and
working with men like himself, in gangs with scarcely a chance for
improvement." An ec