Our guide told us that they sometimes sent from this house from fifteen hundred to two thousand slaves to the South in a year, and that they occasionally had three hundred to four hundred at once in their possession.  That the trade was not now so brisk, but that prices were rising.  The return and profits of this traffic appear to be entirely regulated by the fluctuations in the value of the cotton.  Women are worth one-third less than men.  But one instance of complete escape ever occurred from these premises, though some of the slaves were occasionally trusted out in the fields.  He showed us the substantial clothing, shoes, &c., with which the slaves were supplied when sent to the South; a practice, I fear, enforced more by the cupidity of the buyers, than the humanity of the seller.  Our informant stated, in answer to inquiries, that by the general testimony of the slaves purchased, they were treated better by the planters than was the case ten years ago.  He also admitted the evils of the system, and said, with apparent sincerity, he wished it was put an end to.

We went afterwards to the city jail, to see a youth whose case I had heard of in Delaware, who had come to Alexandria on board a vessel, and had here been seized and imprisoned on suspicion of being a slave, not having any document to prove his freedom.  He had now been incarcerated for near twelve months, and though admitted by the jailer and every one else to be free, he was about to be sold in a few days into slavery for a term, in order to pay the jail-fees, amounting to eighty dollars.  In the evening on returning to Washington, we paid a visit by appointment to John Quincy Adams, ex-president of the United States; who though considerably more than seventy years of age, is yet one of the most assiduous and energetic members of the House of Representatives, and one of the most influential public men of the day.  To this must be added the far higher praise that his distinguished powers are employed in the service of humanity, truth, and justice.  How rare is it to witness such a union of intellectual and moral greatness!  Posterity will do justice to his fame, when slavery shall exist only in the records of the past, and when it shall be related with wonder, that this venerable man, standing almost alone in his defence of the right of petition, received daily anonymous letters threatening him with assassination.  He received us very kindly, and in the course of conversation expressed how much importance he attached to the late repeal of the “nine months law,” in the State of New York, as a favorable indication of the current of public feeling.  He did not appear sanguinely to anticipate that he should be in a majority on his pending motion for the repeal of the “gag.”