American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States by Ebenezer Davies
page 29 of 282 (10%)
page 29 of 282 (10%)
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From No. 181 of the "St. Charles's," we descended, after a good night's
rest, to see some of the lions of the place. Here we are (thought I) in New Orleans--the metropolis of a great slave country,--a town in which exist many depĂ´ts for the disposal of human beings,--the very city where, a few months ago, poor Pauline was sacrificed as the victim of lust and cruelty! Unhappy girl! What a tragedy! On the 1st of August last, I told the horrid tale to my emancipated people in Berbice. Here it is, as extracted from the _Essex_ (United States) _Transcript_. Read it, if you please; and then you will have a notion of the feelings with which I contemplated a city rendered infamous by such a transaction. "Many of our readers have probably seen a paragraph stating that a young slave girl was recently hanged at New Orleans for the crime of striking and abusing her mistress. The religious press of the north has not, so far as we are aware, made any comments upon this execution. It is too busy pulling the mote out of the eye of the heathen, to notice the beam in our nominal Christianity at home. Yet this case, viewed in all its aspects, is an atrocity which has (God be thanked) no parallel in heathen lands. It is a hideous offshoot of American Republicanism and American Christianity! It seems that Pauline--a young and beautiful girl--attracted the admiration of her master, and being (to use the words of the law) his "chattel personal to all intents and purposes whatsoever," became the victim of his lust. So wretched is the condition of the slave woman, that even the brutal and licentious regard of her master is looked upon as the highest exaltation of which her lot is susceptible. The slave girl in this instance evidently so regarded it; and as a natural consequence, in her new condition, triumphed over and insulted her mistress,--in other words, repaid in some degree the scorn and abuse with which her mistress had made her painfully familiar. The laws of the Christian State of Mississippi |
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