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If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to

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To me the American slave-trade is a terrible reality. When a child, my soul was often pierced with a sense of its horrors. I lived on Philpot-street, Fell's Point, Baltimore, and have watched from the wharves the slave-ships in the basin, anchored from the shore, with their cargoes of human flesh, waiting for favorable winds to waft them down the Chesapeake. There was at that time a grand slave-mart kept at the head of Pratt-street, by Austin Woldfolle. His agents were sent into every town and county in Maryland, announcing their arrival through the papers, and on flaming "handbills" headed CASH These men were generally well dressed, and very captivating in their manners. Ever ready to drink, to treat, and to gamble. The fate of many a slave has depended upon the turn of a single card; and many a child has been snatched from the arms of its mother, by bargains arranged in a state of brutal drunkenness.

FOR NEGROES.

The flesh-mongers gather up their victims by dozens, and drive them, chained, to the general depot at Baltimore. When a sufficient number have been collected here, a ship is chartered for the purpose of conveying the forlorn crew to Mobile, or to New Orleans. From the slave-prison to the ship, they are usually driven in the darkness of night; for, since the anti-slavery agitation, a certain caution is observed.

In the deep, still darkness of midnight, I have been often aroused by the dead, heavy footsteps, and the piteous cries of the chained gangs that passed our door. The anguish of my

boyish heart was intense, and I was often consoled, when speaking to my mistress in the morning, to hear her say that the custom was very wicked; that she hated to hear the rattle of the chains, and the heart-rending cries. I was glad to fund one who sympathized with me in my horror.

Fellow-citizens, this murderous traffic is, to-day, in active operation in this boasted republic. In the solitude of my spirit, I see clouds of dust raised on the highways of the south; I see the bleeding footsteps; I hear the doleful wail of fettered humanity; on the way to the slave-markets, where the victims are to be sold like horses, sheep and swine, knocked off to the highest bidder. There I see the tenderest ties ruthlessly broken to gratify the lust, caprice and rapacity of the huvers and sellers of men. My soul sickens at the sight.

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What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety and hypocrisy-a thin vail to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and

bloody, than are the people of these United States at this very hour."

Several years since, a few transatlantic friends of Mr. Douglass raised the necessary funds to purchase his freedom from his master, for, according to the laws of the United States, the brilliant orator was the property of a Maryland trafficker in human flesh! But for this, Mr. Douglass, to-day, would be in imminent danger of seizure and reënslavement. His genius would avail him nothing-were he a Cicero or Demosthenes, a human brute would have the legal right to horsewhip him into subjection.

To those foolish people who contend that the African race is essentially a brute race, and far inferior to any other existing, we commend Frederick Douglass. He is perfectly competent to defend his race, and is himself an argument that cannot be refuted, in favor of the capability of the negro race for the highest degree of refinement and intellectuality. The more such men his race can produce, the sooner the day of its freedom will come. The sooner will the free blacks of the north rise to an equality with the whites. That singular and horrible prejudice against color, which pervades all classes, and which not even the religion of the day has affected, will vanish, when, as a class, the negroes are not only industrious and virtuous, but distinguish themselves for their love of

learning and the fine arts. We mean no excuse for the negro-hating population of this country, but simply state a fact which black men should ponder. Every negro who acts well his part, is assisting his race to rise from its degrading enthrallment.

HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.

WE have no new information to communicate to the reader respecting the history of Mrs. Stowe, neither do we hope to make any profound criticisms upon her remarkable volume, and yet we cannot, in such a series of sketches as this, wholly pass her by. And so, though hundreds, here and in Europe, have written about her, praised her, blamed her, criticised her great work with acuteness, we will venture to make her the subject of an article.

Mrs. Stowe was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, and is a little more than forty years of age. She received an excellent education and a great deal of energy of character from her parents. They removed to Boston when she was young, and there she enjoyed very superior advantages in the pursuit of knowledge. She commenced her career of usefulness as an assistant teacher in the female school of an elder sister in Boston. Her father subsequently went to the west, to preside over Lane Seminary, and Mrs. Stowe, with her sister, went to Cincinnati, where they opened a school for the education of young ladies. Lane Seminary is near Cincinnati, and in the

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