of Africa, the negroes could not be released by the
simple process of landing them at the nearest point,
for the land was filled with savage tribes, the captives
were commonly from the interior, and would merely
have been murdered or sold anew into slavery, had they
been thus abandoned. In time the custom grew
up of taking them to Liberia, the free negro state
established in Africa under the protection of the United
States. But it can hardly be said that much advantage
resulted to the individual negroes rescued by even
this method, for the Liberians were not hospitable,
slave traders camped upon the borders of their state,
and it was not uncommon for a freed slave to find
himself in a very few weeks back again in the noisome
hold of the slaver. Even under the humane care
of the navy officers who were put in command of captured
slavers the human cattle suffered grievously.
Brought on deck at early dawn, they so crowded the
ships that it was almost impossible for the sailors
to perform the tasks of navigation. One officer,
who was put in charge of a slaver that carried 700
slaves, writes:
“They filled the waist and gangways in a fearful
jam, for there were over 700 men, women, boys, and
young girls. Not even a waistcloth can be permitted
among slaves on board ship, since clothing even so
slight would breed disease. To ward off death,
ever at work on a slave ship, I ordered that at daylight
the negroes should be taken in squads of twenty or
more, and given a salt-water bath by the hose-pipe
of the pumps. This brought renewed life after
their fearful nights on the slave deck.... No
one who has never seen a slave deck can form an idea
of its horrors. Imagine a deck about 20 feet
wide, and perhaps 120 feet long, and 5 feet high.
Imagine this to be the place of abode and sleep during
long, hot, healthless nights of 720 human beings!
At sundown, when they were carried below, trained
slaves received the poor wretches one by one, and laying
each creature on his side in the wings, packed the
next against him, and the next, and the next, and
so on, till like so many spoons packed away they fitted
into each other a living mass. Just as they were
packed so must they remain, for the pressure prevented
any movement or the turning of hand or foot, until
the next morning, when from their terrible night of
horror they were brought on deck once more, weak and
worn and sick.” Then, after all had come
up and been splashed with salt water from the pumps,
men went below to bring up the dead. There was
never a morning search of this sort that was fruitless.
The stench, the suffocation, the confinement, oftentimes
the violence of a neighbor, brought to every dawn
its tale, of corpses, and with scant gentleness all
were brought up and thrown over the side to the waiting
sharks. The officer who had this experience writes
also that it was thirty days after capturing the slaver
before he could land his helpless charges.
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