Adams at his post, nobly contending against this violation of the rights of his countrymen, and I could not but regret that, with one or two exceptions, be appeared to find little support from his younger colleagues of the free States.

“The same day we visited one of the well-known slave-trading establishments at Alexandria.  On passing to it we were shewn the costly mansion of its late proprietor, who has lately retired on a large property acquired by the sale of native born Americans.  In an open enclosure, with high walls which it is impossible to scale, with a strong iron-barred door, and in which we were told that there were sometimes from three to four hundred persons crowded, we saw about fifty slaves.  Amongst the number thus incarcerated was a woman with nine children, who had been cruelly separated from their husband and father, and would probably be shortly sent to New Orleans, where they would never be likely to see him again, and where the mother may be for ever severed from every one of her children, and each of them sold to a separate master.  From thence we went to the Alexandria city jail, where we saw a young man who was admitted to be free even by the jailer himself.  He had been seized and committed in the hope that he might prove a slave, and that the party detaining him would receive a reward.  He had been kept there nearly twelve months because he could not pay the jail fees, and instead of obtaining any redress for false imprisonment, was about to be sold into slavery for a term to reimburse these fees.

    “The next morning I was desirous of handing to the President the
    memorial, of which the following is a copy: 

        “’Address to the President of the United States, from
        the Committee of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery
        Society.

“’SIR,—­As the head of a great Confederacy of States, justly valuing their free constitution and political organization, and tenacious of their rights and their character, the Committee of the British and Foreign Anti-slavery Society, through their esteemed coadjutor and representative, Joseph Sturge, would respectfully approach you in behalf of millions of their fellow-men, held in bondage in the United States.  Those millions are denied, not only the immunities enjoyed by the citizens of your great republic generally, and of the equal privileges and the impartial protection of the civil law, but are deprived of their personal rights, so that they cease to be regarded and treated, under your otherwise noble institutions, as MEN, except in the commission of crime, when the utmost rigor of your penal statutes is invoked and enforced against them; but are reduced to the degraded condition of “chattels personal in the hands of their owners and possessors, to all intents, constructions, and purposes, whatsoever.”

“’This is the language and the law of slavery; and under this law,