5. CHAPTER V.
THE YOUNG MOTHER.
On the fourth morning, the Patriot landed at Grand Gulf, a beautiful
town on the left bank of the Mississippi. Among the numerous passengers
who came on board at Rodney was another slave-trader, with nine
human chattels which he was conveying to the Southern market. The
passengers, both ladies and gentlemen, were startled at seeing among
the new lot of slaves a woman so white as not to be distinguishable
from the other white women on board. She had in her arms a child so
white that no one would suppose a drop of African blood flowed through
its blue veins.
No one could behold that mother with her helpless babe, without feeling
that God would punish the oppressor. There she sat, with an expressive
and intellectual forehead, and a countenance full of dignity
and heroism, her dark golden locks rolled back from her almost snow-white
forehead and floating over her swelling bosom. The tears that
stood in her mild blue eyes showed that she was brooding over sorrows
and wrongs that filled her bleeding heart.
The hearts of the passers-by grew softer, while gazing upon that
young mother as she pressed sweet kisses on the sad, smiling lips of the
infant that lay in her lap. The small, dimpled hands of the innocent
creature were slyly hid in the warm bosom on which the little one
nestled. The blood of some proud Southerner, no doubt, flowed
through the veins of that child.
When the boat arrived at Natches, a rather good-looking, genteel-appearing
man came on board to purchase a servant. This individual
introduced himself to Jennings as the Rev. James Wilson. The slave-trader
conducted the preacher to the deck-cabin, where he kept his
slaves, and the man of God, after having some questions answered, selected
Agnes as the one best suited to his service.
It seemed as if poor Marion's heart would break when she found that
she was to be separated from her mother. The preacher, however, appeared
to be but little moved by their sorrow, and took his newly-purchased
victim on shore. Agnes begged him to buy her daughter,
but he refused, on the ground that he had no use for her.
During the remainder of the passage, Marion wept bitterly,
After a run of a few hours, the boat stopped at Baton Rouge, where
an additional number of passengers were taken on board, among whom
were a number of persons who had been attending the races at that
place. Gambling and drinking were now the order of the day.
The next morning, at ten o'clock, the boat arrived at New Orleans,
where the passengers went to their hotels and homes, and the negroes to
the slave-pens.
Lizzie, the white slave-mother, of whom we have already spoken,
created as much of a sensation by the fairness of her complexion and
the alabaster whiteness of her child, when being conveyed on shore at
New Orleans, as she had done when brought on board at Grand Gulf.
Every one that saw her felt that slavery in the Southern States was not
confined to the negro. Many had been taught to think that slavery was
a benefit rather than an injury, and those who were not opposed to the
institution before, now felt that if whites were to become its victims, it
was time at least that some security should be thrown around the Anglo-Saxon
to save him from this servile and degraded position.
