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AMERICAN KIDNAPPERS.

ONE of the most revolting features in American society is the insecurity of life and liberty among the free persons of colour, in the Northern as well as the southern states. No free black is safe, even in the city of New York, without his parchment certificate about his body, at all times, and in all places. A set of miscreants are constantly prowling about, who, under colour of searching for runaway slaves, kidnap those who never were slaves, and hurry them off into interminable bondage. The papers published by the friends of the negro abound with the most frightful cases of oppression and cruelty of this kind. The laws passed for the protection of such persons are too feeble against that universal prejudice which is inherited by almost the entire population; so that a case of wrong which in this country would ring from one end of the land to the other, is there but slightly regarded, however deep the interests that are involved.

"Rev. W. Munro, of Portland, and Mr. Forbes, of Boston, concur in declaring that the practice of whites to search any coloured persons, bond or free, male or female, whom they meet in the slave-states, is universal; and indeed any one who reflects upon the laws of those states, must be aware that this right of search would necessarily result from those laws. This is very important in its bearing on the kidnapping branch of the Domestic Trade. For, generally speaking, a free coloured man, deprived of his free papers, can entertain very little hope of vindicating his freedom. Where the liberty of a slave is in question, it is extremely difficult to obtain the testimony of whites to facts in his favour, however clear or notorious they may be. Mr. Forbes says, that he has known white witnesses, whose love of truth, justice, and humanity impelled them to come forward, and enabled them to defy persecution, to give their evidence amidst the hisses of the whole court-house. When it is considered that the sheriffs and constables or other persons serving subpoenas for witnesses, must all be white-that they must be paid-that the negro has very little to pay with, and can never, on the score of expense, compete with his master--that even if he should be able to bring his witnesses into court, he can seldom, from these causes, have legal counsel; and that at last he is to be judged by slaveholders, it must be seen and acknowledged, that any free coloured man, without his certificate in his pocket, is a slave, not of one man, but of every man he meets! Such are some of the consequences of substituting a bit of parchment for that great law of God, that all men are free; that universal law, which the Roman code in its worst state fully acknowledged, and applied to the condition of slavery in that empire; so that there, in the worst of times, every man was presumed to be free, until the contrary were proved. Here he is presumed to be a slave, unless he proves himself free!

"The laws of the slave states concur with private depravity, to keep up this abominable trade. Their prisons stand ever ready to fly open for the accommodation of soul-sellers and stealers, and to close upon their captives. The statutes of the old slave-breeding and slave-trading southern states provide every means

for rendering man-merchandizing easy and lucrative. Thus they authorize the county courts to issue, under seal, certificates of the good character of any slave about to be sold to Georgia, Louisiana, &c. which greatly enhances his merchantable value, and is analogous to an invoice or bill of health in a lawful commerce. The inhuman, and worse than heathen principles, universal in the slave states, that any coloured man shall be taken and deemed to be a slave, and shall be incompetent as a witness, whether slave or not, augment prodigiously the facility of enslaving free men. Thus any coloured man may be imprisoned by any white, and if no white witness appear, he must be sold to pay the advertising, jail fees, and for apprehending him. The laws in some states are so conscientious as to direct that in such cases he shall be sold only for a term of years to pay the above expenses; but all accounts of the practice agree that this restriction is generally nugatory. Once sold, they are taken to Georgia and other states more south, and disposed of as entire slaves, to those who know not the contrary, or disregard it if they do; and after this they must inevitably remain slaves for the residue of their lives. The awful motto was not more applicable to Dante's hell:

"O ye who enter here, abandon hope!"

than to the entrance of Georgia or the Mississippi by these unhappy men.

"It is true that free papers,' as they are called, are some protection so long as they are retained, but what are they worth when every white ruffian has the RIGHT of search, and in nine cases out of ten finds those papers, however carefully concealed, and tears them in pieces?

"Another law, which, if not universal, is very general, in slave states, is that a slave, or any person for him, who shall sue for the freedom of the slave, in case the action shall fail, shall pay to the master DOUBLE COSTS, and no slave can prosecute such action without first giving security for costs.

"With such multiplied impediments in their way, how many free men held in bondage, will be likely to vindicate their freedom? The negroes must have a white man in some states to prosecute for them; in all, they must have white sureties and witnesses, either of which it renders a white man unpopular with his caste to be. Then he has counsel to fee, and clerk's and jury fees to advance. All these things require money of men, whose very condition it is to have no right to acquire property, and to be incapable of possessing a farthing! Supposing him by some miracle to have surmounted these, still judge and jury are slaveholders."

Mr. Bourne, in his Picture of Slavery, relates, that "nothing is more common than for two of these white partners in iniquity, Satan-like, to start upon the prowl, and if they find a freeman on the road, to demand his certificate, tear it in pieces or secrete it, tie him to one of their horses, hurry to some jail, while one whips the citizen along as fast as their horses can travel. There, by an understanding with the jailer, who shares in the spoil, all possibility of intercourse with his friends is cut off. At the earliest possible period, the captive is sold to pay the felonious claims of the law, bought through jugglery by this trio of man-stealers; and then transferred to some of their accomplices in iniquity, who fill every part of the southern states with fraud, rapine, and blood."

The following heart-rending facts will fully confirm the above statements; and if they do not awaken British Christians to arise for the help of this poor, despised, and down-trodden portion of their fellow-creatures, we shall despair of arousing their sympathies on any subject.

"In the same garret, were a young black widow woman, and an infant at the breast, both of whom were born free. Her husband had died a few days previous to her seizure, and she was in a state of pregnancy at the time. She stated that the man in whose house she resided, together with her brother, and three other persons, came into the room where she was in bed, seized and dragged her out, fastened a noose round her neck to prevent her from screaming, and attempted to blindfold her, which she resisted with such violence that she prevented them from succeeding. She said, while one of them was endeavouring to fix the bandage over her eyes, that she seized his cheek with her teeth, and tore a piece of it entirely off. She said one of them struck her head several times with a stick of wood, from the wounds of which she was almost entirely covered with blood. She showed me a large scar upon her forehead, occasioned by one of the blows which a gentleman, who saw her the day previous to the seizure, has since informed me was not there before. She said, while she was struggling against them, and screaming, the man in whose house she lived bawled out, 'Choak the ! don't let her halloo; she'll scare my wife!' Having conquered her by superior force, she said they placed her with the child in the chaise, and refusing to dress herself, three of them, leaving the two who belonged to the house, carried her off in the condition that she was dragged from the bed, to a certain tavern in Maryland, and sold them both to the mandealer, who brought them to the city of Washington. She stated that one of her captors drove the carriage, and held the rope which was fixed to her neck, and that one rode each side, on horseback; that while one of them was negociating a bargain with her purchaser, he asked her who her master was, and replying that she had none, her seller beckoned to him to go into another room, where the business was adjusted without troubling her with any further inquiries. She stated that her purchaser confessed, while on the way to Annapolis, that he believed she might have had some claim to freedom, and intimated that he would have taken her back, if the man of whom he bought her had not run away; but requested her, notwithstanding, to say nothing to any body about her being free, which she refused to comply with. She affirmed that he offered her for sale to several persons, who refused to purchase her on account of her asserting that she was free. She stated that her purchaser had left her in Washington for a few weeks, and gone to the Eastern Shore, in search of more black people, in order to make up a drove for Georgia.

"Mr. Jude Hall, a coloured man of New Hampshire, a valiant soldier during the whole of the American war, and at the time of his death a pensioner of the United States, lost three sons by kidnapping from New England vessels. One of them, after ten years' bondage, escaped to England, and wrote from there a few years ago, an account of his being sold by his captain, of his continuance in slavery during the above period, of his escape thence, and of his success and prosperity after arriving in England, where he had become the captain of a coasting vessel, and was happily married. This news was received after the

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death of the father. The other two, if living, are still in slavery, and it is not known where.*

"A coloured seaman of Boston was lately kidnapped at New Orleans, and committed to the calaboose, preparatory to being sold and sent into the interior. He supposes that his captain, a Scotchman named Bulkley, was privy to the outrage. There he remained in the most filthy and infested of prisons, and believes that he should have been in slavery at this time, if he had not been able to speak French. Availing himself of this advantage, he conveyed a message through a creole French soldier who was on guard, to two friends in the city, who obtained his release.

"This sailor saw in the prison nine coloured men, whom he knew to be free, having known several of them as stewards on board of northern vessels. Two of them belonged to Boston, one to Portland, and three to New-York. After twenty days, they were to be sold. The witness adds the following remarkable declaration, which it is to be hoped may operate, if not as a help to reform this horrid abuse, at least as a caution to all coloured seamen, both against their own officers, and the caitiffs who infest the shores of the Mississippi.

"There is a continual stream of free coloured persons from Boston, New-York, Philadelphia, and other sea-ports of the United States, passing through the calaboose into slavery in the country.

"James G. Barbadoes, of Boston, a member of the New England Anti-Slavery Convention states, among five cases of kidnapping within his own knowledge, one was that of his own brother. We quote his words:

"About eighteen years ago, Robert H. Barbadoes was kidnapped in New Orleans, imprisoned, handcuffed and chained, for about five months or longer, and deprived every way of communicating his situation to his parents. His protection was taken from him, and torn up. He was often severely flogged to be made submissive, and deny that he was free born. He was unluckily caught with a letter wrote with a stick, and with the blood drawn from his own veins, for the purpose of communicating to his father his situation; but this project failed, for the letter was torn away from him and destroyed, and he very severely flogged. He then lost almost every hope; but at length the above Peter Smitht was kidnapped again in this garden of paradise of freedom, and being lodged in the same cell with him, he communicated to Smith the particulars of his sufferings. At the examination of Smith, he was found to have free papers, signed by the Governor; in consequence of which he was set at liberty. He then wrote to Barbadoes' parents, and likewise arrived in Boston as soon as the letter. Free papers were immediately obtained, and signed by his father and Mrs. Mary Turel, Mr. — Giles, and Mr. Thomas Clark, town clerk; and by the Governor of this state demanding him without delay, he was returned to his native town, Boston, where all these other persons belonged.

The following case is related by Mr. Stanton.

“A member of this institution, recently visiting among the coloured people of Cincinnati, entered a house where was a mother and her little son. The *Affidavit of Robert Roberts of Boston.

+ One of the four persons previously mentioned by Mr. Barbadoes.

wretched appearance of the house, and the extreme poverty of its inmates, induced the visitor to suppose that the husband of the woman must be a drunkard. He inquired of the boy, who was two or three years old, where his father was? He replied, · Papa stole.' The visitor seemed not to understand, and turning to the mother, said, 'What does he mean?' She then related the following circumstances. About two years ago, one evening, her husband was sitting in the house, when two men came in, and professing great friendship, persuaded him under some pretence to go on board a steam-boat, then lying at the dock, and bound down the river. After some hesitation, he consented to go. She heard nothing from him for more than a year, but supposed he had been kidnapped. Last spring, Dr. —, a physician of Cincinnati, being at Natchez, Mississippi, saw this negro in a drove of slaves, and recognized him. He ascertained, from conversation with him, that he had been driven about from place to place since he was decoyed from home by the slave-drivers,--had changed masters two or three times, and had once been lodged in jail for safe keeping, where he remained some time. When Dr. returned to Cincinnati, he saw the wife of the negro, and engaged to take the necessary steps for his liberation. But soon afterwards, this gentleman fell a victim to the cholera, which was then prevailing in Cincinnati. No efforts have since been made to recover this negro. No tidings have been heard from him since the return of Dr. He is probably now labouring on some sugar or cotton plantation in Louisiana, without the hope of escaping from slavery, although he is a free born citizen of Philadelphia."

REVIEW:-SLAVERY IN AMERICA: A REPRINT of an Appeal TO THE CHRISTIAN WOMEN OF THE SLAVE STATES OF AMERICA. BY ANGELINA E. GRIMKE, of Charleston, South Carolina. With Introduction, Notes, and Appendix, By GEORGE THOMPSON.

Hamilton and Co. London.

THE above is the title of a pamphlet, a large edition of which has just issued from the Edinburgh press, and which we earnestly recommend to all who have any sympathy remaining for that large portion of suffering humanity who are yet held in the iron fetters of slavery; and the more galling and degrading from the high profession of religion which many of their unfeeling taskmasters have assumed.

This appeal is introduced to the attention of the British reader by several useful memoranda on the general subject of slavery, and which adapt it to that large class of readers, who, since the passing of the abolition act, have not taken much interest in a subject which once absorbed their almost entire attention.

The APPEAL is from the pen of Miss Angelina E. Grimké, of Charleston, South Carolina (a slave state), a lady of distinguished family connexions, great moral worth, of peculiarly engaging manners, and undoubted piety. "It was my privilege," remarks Mr. Thompson, " to become acquainted with Miss Grimké during a visit to Philadelphia two years ago. Her fervent zeal in the cause of the slave, blended with a manner peculiarly soft and unostentatious, produced a deep impression upon my mind. I can bear testimony to the high estimation in which she is held