their number at 59,000 in 1714, 78,000 in 1727, and 263,000 in 1754.
The census of 1790 recorded 697,624 slaves in the United States. This
almost incredible increase was not due alone to the fecundity of the
negro. It was due, in large measure, to the unceasing slave trade.

It is difficult to imagine more severe ordeals than the negroes
endured in the day of the slave trade. Their captors in the jungles of
Africa--usually neighboring tribesmen in whom the instinct for
capture, enslavement, and destruction was untamed--soon learned that
the aged, the inferior, the defective, were not wanted by the trader.
These were usually slaughtered. Then followed for the less fortunate
the long and agonizing march to the seaboard. Every one not robust
enough to endure the arduous journey was allowed to perish by the way.
On the coast, the agent of the trader or the middle-man awaited the
captive. He was an expert at detecting those evidences of weakness and
disease which had eluded the eye of the captor or the rigor of the
march. "An African factor of fair repute," said a slave captain,[8]
"is ever careful to select his human cargo with consummate prudence,
so as not only to supply his employers with athletic laborers, but to
avoid any taint of disease." But the severest test of all was the
hideous "middle passage" which remained to every imported slave a
nightmare to the day of his death. The unhappy captives were crowded
into dark, unventilated holds and were fed scantily on food which was
strange to their lips; they were unable to understand the tongue of
their masters and often unable to understand the dialects of their
companions in misfortune; they were depressed with their helplessness
on the limitless sea, and their childish superstitions were fed by a
thousand new terrors and emotions. It was small wonder that, when
disease began its ravages in the shipload of these kidnaped beings,
"the mortality of thirty per cent was not rare." That this was