short time, her new owner took her with others to the far South, where her
parents heard no more of her.

Here was a girl born and reared under the mildest form of slavery. Her
original master was reputed to be even indulgent. He lived in a town, and
was a high-bred gentleman, and a lawyer. He had but a few slaves, and had
no occasion for an overseer, those negro leeches, to watch and drive them;
but when he became embarrassed by his own folly, the chattel principle
doomed this girl to be sold at the same sale with his books, house, and
horses. With my master she found herself under far more stringent
discipline than she had been accustomed to, and finally degraded, and sold
where her condition could not be worse, and where she had not the least
hope of ever bettering it.

This case presents the legitimate working of the great chattel principle.
It is no accidental result--it is the fruit of the tree. You cannot
constitute slavery without the chattel principle--and with the chattel
principle you cannot save it from these results. Talk not then about kind
and christian masters. They are not masters of the system. The system is
master of them; and the slaves are their vassals.

These storms rise on the bosom of the calmed waters of the system. You are
a slave, a being in whom another owns property. Then you may rise with his
pride, but remember the day is at hand when you must also fall with his
folly. To-day you may be pampered by his meekness; but to-morrow you will
suffer in the storm of his passions.

In the month of September, 1848, there appeared in my study, one morning,
in New York City, an aged coloured man of tall and slender form. I saw
depicted on his countenance anxiety bordering on despair, still I was