The condition of domestic slaves, however, does not generally appear to be bad; but the ugly feature is, that should it be so, they have no power to change it.  I have seen much kind attention bestowed upon the health of slaves; but it is on these occasions impossible to forget, that did this attention fail, a valuable piece of property would be endangered.  Unhappily the slaves, too, know this, and the consequence is, that real kindly feeling very rarely can exist between the parties.  It is said that slaves born in a family are attached to the children of it, who have grown up with them.  This may be the case where the petty acts of infant tyranny have not been sufficient to conquer the kindly feeling naturally produced by long and early association; and this sort of attachment may last as long as the slave can be kept in that state of profound ignorance which precludes reflection.  The law of Virginia has taken care of this.  The State legislators may truly be said to be “wiser in their generation than the children of light,” and they ensure their safety by forbidding light to enter among them.  By the law of Virginia it is penal to teach any slave to read, and it is penal to be aiding and abetting in the act of instructing them.  This law speaks volumes.  Domestic slaves are, generally speaking, tolerably well fed, and decently clothed; and the mode in which they are lodged seems a matter of great indifference to them.  They are rarely exposed to the lash, and they are carefully nursed in sickness.  These are the favourable features of their situation.  The sad one is, that they may be sent to the south and sold.  This is the dread of all the slaves north of Louisiana.  The sugar plantations, and more than all, the rice grounds of Georgia and the Carolinas, are the terror of American negroes; and well they may be, for they open an early grave to thousands; and to avoid loss it is needful to make their previous labour pay their value.

There is something in the system of breeding and rearing negroes in the Northern States, for the express purpose of sending them to be sold in the South, that strikes painfully against every feeling of justice, mercy, or common humanity.  During my residence in America I became perfectly persuaded that the state of a domestic slave in a gentleman’s family was preferable to that of a hired American “help,” both because they are more cared for and valued, and because their condition being born with them, their spirits do not struggle against it with that pining discontent which seems the lot of all free servants in America.  But the case is widely different with such as, in their own persons, or those of their children, “loved in vain,” are exposed to the dreadful traffic above mentioned.  In what is their condition better than that of the kidnapped negroes on the coast of Africa?  Of the horror in which this enforced migration is held I had a strong proof during our stay in Virginia.  The father of a young slave, who belonged to the lady with whom we boarded, was destined to this fate, and within an hour after it was made known to him, he sharpened the hatchet with which he had been felling timber, and with his right hand severed his left from the wrist.