Untitled - African American History

Clx HISTORICAL SKETCH OF SLAVERY.
sympathy between the master and slave unknown upon
the islands.
They stood to each other as the protector and the protected.
The relation became patriarchal. The children
of the planter and the children of his slaves hunted,
fished, and played together. An almost perfect equality
existed, in their sports, between the future master and
his future slave. To dispense exact justice to all was
the office of the planter. Obedience and respect from
all was his reward. Such a state of society made sla-
very, in the Colonies, a social institution. It was upheld
and maintained, not for gain solely, but because it had
become, as it were, a part of the social system, a social
necessity.
It is not strange, therefore, that the treatment of slaves
from their treatment
upon the continent, differed widely
upon the islands. The result of this difference is to be
seen in the great and steady increase of the negroes
within the Colonies, as exhibited by the census, and their
astounding decrease in the islands, notwithstanding the
constant influx from the African coast. 1
The slave-trade was not confined to America as a
market. Though to a much more limited extent, England,
Spain, and perhaps France, received a part of the
cargoes prepared for the Indies. 2 At the time of the
decision of the Somersett case, Lord Mansfield supposed
there were 15,000 slaves in the British Isles ; and Lord
Stowell, in the case of the slave Grace, says, " The personal
traffic in slaves, resident in England, had been as
public and as authorized in London, as in any of our
1
See the instructive and conclusive statistics and comparison, given
by Carey, in his Slave-Trade, Domestic and Foreign.
2 Hume, in his Essay on National Characters, asserts that negro slaves
were " dispersed all over Europe ;" and Granville Sharp, in his Essay
on the Just Limitation of Slavery, quotes the passage from Hume, and
admits the fact, pp. 29, 30. Dr. Beattie does the same, Essay on Truth,
p. 459.