and tell posterity that we have been abused.  We do, indeed, sell to the white men a part of our prisoners, and we have a right to do so.  Are not all prisoners at the disposal of their captors? and are we to blame, if we send delinquents to a far country?  I have been told you do the same.  If you want no more slaves from us, why cannot you be ingenious and tell the plain truth; saying that the slaves you have already purchased are sufficient for the country for which you bought them; or that the artists who used to make fine things, are all dead, without having taught anybody to make more?  But for a parcel of men, with long heads, to sit down in England, and frame laws for us, and pretend to dictate how we are to live, of whom they know nothing, never having been in a black man’s country during the whole course of their lives, is to me somewhat extraordinary!  No doubt they must have been biased by the report of some one, who had had to do with us; who, for want of a due knowledge of the treatment of slaves, found that they died on his hands, and that his money was lost; and seeing that others thrived by the traffic, he envious of their good luck, has vilified both black and white traders.

You have seen me kill many men at the customs; and you have often observed delinquents at Grigwhee, and others of my provinces tied, and sent up to me.  I kill them, but do I ever insist on being paid for them?  Some heads I order to be placed at my door, others to be strewed about the market place, that the people may stumble upon them, when they little expect such a sight.  This gives a grandeur to my customs, far beyond the display of fine things which I buy; this makes my enemies fear me, and gives me such a name in the Bush.[9] Besides, if I neglect this indispensable duty, would my ancestors suffer me to live? would they not trouble me day and night, and say, that I sent no body to serve them? that I was only solicitous about my own name, and forgetful of my ancestors?  White men are not acquainted with these circumstances; but I now tell you that you may hear and know, and inform your countrymen, why customs are made, and will be made, as long as black men continue to possess their country; the few that can be spared from this necessary celebration, we sell to the white men; and happy, no doubt, are such, when they find themselves on the Grigwhee, to be disposed of to the Europeans.  “We shall still drink water,” say they to themselves; “white men will not kill us; and we may even avoid punishment, by serving our new masters with fidelity.”

—­The New York Weekly Magazine, II, 430, 1792.

FOOTNOTES: 

[1] “Othello,” the author of these two essays, was identified as a Negro by Abbe Gregoire in his “De la litterature des Negres.”

[2] The writer refers here to the Convention of 1787 which framed the Constitution of the United States.

[3] Here the writer has in mind the organization of the English Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade and the support given the cause by Wilberforce, Pitt, Fox and Burke in England and by Brissot, Claviere and Montmorin in France.