IMPUDENCE — The following paragraph from the New Orleans Mercantile Advertiser has a larger amount of brazen impudence that we supposed could be squeezed into so small a compass. It is really amusing to hear the ‘canting scoundrel’ who wrote it, talk of ‘robbing our fellow creatures of their all’ — meaning thereby the planters, who have stolen from their slaves liberty, happiness, knowledge, wealth ,and every thing blessed and holy in life! Over the losses of such fellow critturs we cannot shed a tear, especially when those losses consist in the elopement of their victims. —-
Here are excerpts from the paragraphs quoted: “It was thought kidnapping was not practiced here. To the sorrow of many of our citizens, the contrary is the fact and not a season sickness passes, but that twenty or thirty slaves are carried off by steam boats, up the country, and by vessels to the north. We do not charge this upon masters of boats or vessels, for we cannot believe they would act in this manner, but our opinion leads us to suppose that even they are made the dupes of a set of canting scoundrels, who under the cloak of humanity rob their fellow creatures of their all. This is done too in the face of several city ordinances, regulating the labor and general intercourse of slaves on board of vessels.” (Liberator, February 26, 1831)
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