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Slavery01

GOOD PRICES FOR NEGROES.—We learn from the Sumter (Ala.) Democrat, that on the 24th instant, Hon. A. A.. Coleman, executor of the late Benjamin Ivy, with Win. K. Ustiek as Auctioneer sold fifty-two Negroes of indiscriminate ages, sizes and condi­tions, for the large sum of $50,000, lacking only thirty dollars, being an average of over $960. Eight­een of these Negroes were under ten years of age; eight were forty years old and upward, and they were sold in families without separation, frequently as many as five or six selling together. Negro men brought from $1400 to $1675; boys from twelve to fourteen years old from l250 to 1400; girls from nine to fourteen years of age, from $1050 to $1400.

One of the most extraordinary sales of slaves—not so much on account of their number as the prices obtained for them, although even the number was very large—was made at public auction at the village of Autaugaville during four days of last week. One hundred and seventy slaves belonging to the estate of Richard Morton, were sold, on twelve months time, with interest added, fox the enormous sum of one hun­dred and sixty thousand dollars, being an average of  $941 and a fraction over. In the large number com­posing the lot were old and young, halt and lame, and one was deaf and dumb. A girl aged 14, black end a field hand, brought $1935. A young fellow was bid off for $2160. Evidently, the ‘Flush times of Ala­bama’ have come again Montgomery Confederation.

 NEGROES. On last Monday, a great many negroes were sold in this place—only four of them, however, at sheriff sale, and those under a disputed title. Somewhere between 50 and 75 must have been put upon the block. They were sold in all manner of ways—for cash, on one and two years’ credit, and sometimes with interest, and sometimes without. They brought high prices, especially these that were sold on a credit. It is unnecessary to specify prices, but they were large. These high prices, doubtless bring many of the negroes into market, although some of them were estate negroes. And it is likely that the same prices will range for several years at least. Cotton is bringing very high figures. In fact, a cot­ton plantation is now about the best thing in which capitalists can invest. We have frequently express­ed the opinion that the culture will never again overtake the consumption, so as materially to re­duce the prices. We reiterate the same opinion now. And so long as that is the case, the price of Negroes must range high. Besides, there is great demand for negro labor on railroad work. That de­mand, also, must continue for some years, and per­haps increase. Hence, in our judgment, the price of negroes will not decline for years to come. Even the introduction of a million of Africans would not materially affect prices. Some will, undoubtedly, be smuggled in, but there is no possibility of re-open­ing the slave trade, lawfully, until dissolution of the Union.

Negro property is getting to be a monopoly—the high price of it makes it so. And we are sorry to see that a great many of our largest holders are op­posed to the re-opening the slave trade, either lawfully or otherwise. They are acting upon a mistaken principle. They fear that ii will reduce the value of their Negroes. We have already ex­pressed the opinion, that the introduction of a mil­lion would have no material effect. But suppose it did, negro property would be so much the safer. For there would be a larger mass of our own Citizens interested in its perpetuity, and it would command still more respect abroad. All our people are still true to the South, because they are influenced by principle; but we can hope that will always be the case, when the great majority of the slaves shall be­come a perfect monopoly, as it is now fast doing, in the hands of a few rich men, comprising not one twentieth of our population; and when there will no longer be any hope of a laboring man ever possessing a slave?

We have no times or space now to discuss this sub­ject; but it is one of fearful importance, and there is no use in shutting our eyes to its magnitude. It will have to be met before the end of the century. In our opinion, the very existence of the South depends upon the re­opening of the African Slave Trade.— Tuskeqee, (Ala.) Republican.

Runaway Negro Camp.—On Friday last, a runaway negro camp was discovered on an ‘island,’ in Big Swamp, situated between Bladen and Robeson counties. On Saturday -morning, a company of twelve or fifteen started out to hunt them, and after starting them from their camp, one of the negroes fired at Mr. David C. Lewis, wounding him, from the effects of which he died on Sunday morning. On Friday, a man named Taylor was shot  at twice from the same place, but miss­ed. The negroes had cleared a place for a garden, had cows, &c. in the swamp. None arrested. The swamp is about four miles wide, and almost impenetrable.— Wilmington (N. C.) Journal, 14th.

 In 1764, George Washington purchased Jack and a woman named Cleo; in 1758 he got Gregory. Soon afterward he acquired Hannah and child, Will, and a man with one hand named Charles. Judy and her child were later purchases, as were Adam, two men each named Frank, and Will, who were purchased from Mrs. Mary Lee in 1768. Will be­came famous as Billy Lee, the gen­eral’s inseparable manservant from then on until the general’s death in 1799. Savage painted him in the picture of the Washington fam­ily and he was the only slave freed outright under terms of Washing­ton’s will.

In 1766, Washington advertised for the capture of a runaway, Tom, who was only one of any number who “eloped” and were pursued with vigor. It was probably that same Tom to whom Washington re­ferred in a letter of July 2, 1766, addressed to a ship captain, John Thompson, in which Washington shipped the slave to the West Indies in exchange for some rum and sun­dries. Another slave named Wag­goner Jack went on the same voyage in 1791 in exchange for a cask of wine.

On November 14, 1835, according to the Alexandria Gazette, a reporter in Fairfax County, Virginia, ob­served a group of blacks working at Mount Vernon and asked their names. He was told they were Jo­seph Smith, Sambo Anderson and his son William, George Lear, Duck and Morris Jasper, Levi and Jo Richardson, William Moss, William Hayes and Nancy Squander.

They were tending the graves of George and Martha Washington, for they were freed after the death of Mrs. Washington. Under the terms of the general’s will, all the slaves were to be freed after the death of his wife. However, his nephew, Supreme Court Justice Bushrod Washington, sold twenty-one of them, he claimed, to pay taxes on the estate.

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I have heard from an eyewitness that on more than one occasion when the Sage of Monticello (Thomas Jefferson) left that retreat for the Presidential abode in Washington, on more than one occasion there would be, on top of the same coach, a yellow boy running away. When told that one of his slaves was run­ning away without leave, Jefferson said, ‘Well, let him go his way—his right is as good as his father’s.’

It has also been credibly reported over the signatures of respectable citizens that a reputed daughter of Thomas Jefferson has been exposed for sale in New Orleans as a slave.

—William Goodell, Slavery and Anti­Slavery, 1853.

Mr. Jefferson freed a number of his servants in his will. I think he would have freed all of them if his affairs had not been so much involved.

He freed one girl some years before he died and there was a great deal of talk about it. People said he freed her because she was his own daugh­ter; she was his daughter. I know that I have seen him come out of her mother’s room many a morn­ing when I went up to Monticello very early. When she was nearly grown, by Mr. Jefferson’s direction, I paid her stage fare to Philadelphia and gave her fifty dollars. I have never seen her since and don’t know what became of her.

Statement by Edmund Bacon, for twenty years the manager of Thomas Jefferson’s estate. From Jefferson at Monticello: The Private Life of Thomas Jef­ferson, by Reverend Hamilton W. Pierson, New York, 1862.

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