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Show 42 PORT RAITURE OF SLAVERY. sufficient space to extend themselves upon the floor to sleep.* A short time after having completed the memorandmm above alluded to, the youth just mentioned, having learnecl the subject on which I had been occupied, and beingprompt to communicate whatever he might meet witl• relative to it, infoniled me on returning from school, in the evening of the 19th December, 1815, that a black woman, destined for transpQrtation to Georgia, with a coflle which was about to start, attempted to escape, by jumping out of the window of the garret of a three story brick tavern in F. Street, about day break in the morning ; and that in the fall she had her back and both anns broken! I remarked that I did not wonder that she did so, and inquired whether it had not killed her ? To which he replied, that he understood that she was dead, and that the Georgia-me~~, had gone off with the others. The relation of this shocking disaster, excited considera ble agitation' in my mind, and fully confirmed the sentiments, which I had already acloptcd and recorded, of the multiplied hon-ors added to slavery, when its victims arc bought and solei, frequently for distant destinations, with as much indifference as fourfcoted beasts. Supposing this to have been a recent occurrence, and being desirous of sec:;ing the mangled slave before she should be buried, I proceeded with some haste, early on the following morning, in search of the house already mentioned. Calling at a house near the one at which the catastrophe occun-ed, I was informed, that it had been three weeks since it took I * Judge Morrel, in his charge to the grantl jury of Washington, et tl}e session of the circuit court of the United States, in January, 1816, for tbe District of Columbia, urged this subject toils aU~ntion , very emphatically, as an object of remonstrance nnd juridical in- ~. vestigation. He saad theftt.quency nilh 1vhich th ~ slrPets o flu city had hum crowded 1flilh manacled captives.J sometimes, eve" on lhf. sabbath, could not fail to sllock the .fi!elings of all hwiW.ne person3 ; that it 1Va8 repvgnanllo the spirit of our political iiMfilwtions, and the rights oj man, and he believed, n:as calculated to impgir the publir moral.t, liyfamiliarizing scenes of cmeltylo the minds oflhe youth. |
