make such a demonstration that Jackson would be obliged to
withdraw Dinah from the sale, in which case he would no doubt
dispose of her privately. On the Saturday he mounted his horse
and rode into Richmond, telling Dan to meet him there. At the
hour the sale was announced he went to the yard where it was to
take place.

This was a somewhat quiet and secluded place; for although the
sale of slaves was permitted by law in Virginia, at any rate these
auctions were conducted quietly and with as little publicity as
possible. For although the better classes still regarded slavery as a
necessary institution, they were conscious that these sales,
involving as they did the separation of families, were indefensible,
and the more thoughtful would gladly have seen them abolished,
and a law passed forbidding the sale of negroes save as part and
parcel of the estate upon which they worked, an exception only
being made in the case of gross misconduct. Many of the
slave-owners, indeed, forbade all flogging upon their estates, and
punished refractory slaves, in the first place, by the cutting off of
the privileges they enjoyed in the way of holidays, and if this did
not answer, threatened to sell them--a threat which was, in the vast
majority of cases, quite sufficient to ensure good behavior; for the
slaves were well aware of the difference between life in the
well-managed establishments in Virginia and that in some of the
other Southern States. Handing his horse to Dan, Vincent joined a
knot of four or five of his acquaintances who had strolled in from
mere curiosity.

There were some thirty or forty men in the yard, a few of whom
had come in for the purpose of buying; but the great majority had