• We present our patrons, to-day, a new head for the Liberator. It is illustrative of a slave auction — the scene is appropriately located at the seat of the National Government. Sales of slaves are very common at a horse market. On the right side of the vignette, stands the auctioneer with his hammer lifted up for a bid; at the side and in front of him are some southern speculators, with the family to be sold — a man and his wife, (whose attitudes express their grief,) and their two children, who are clinging to their mother. On the left side are seen in the distance, the Capitol of the United States with the American flag (on which is conspicuous the word LIBERTY) floating on the breeze; a purchaser examining a negro, as a butcher would an ox; and a whipping-post , to which a slave is chained, who is receiving a severe flagellation. Down in the dust, our Indian Treaties are seen.
(Liberator, April 23, 1831, pg 3)