Communication

The English Tenant and the American Slave

SHAMEFUL CASE OF LEGALIZED CRUELTY – the following statement is from the Richmond Whig:

(This excerpt below was published at the request of TJ as explained in the body of the letter.)

LAWS AGAINST FREE NEGROES.  – We are induced to recur to this subject by the recital to us yesterday, which we feel sure, will excite the sympathy of every reader, who has a heart. We will premise that the narrator is a gentleman occupying a very high official in the service of this, his native state, and that to secure an entire credit to his narrative, it would only be necessary to mention his name.

Sometime during last summer, a colored girl, born free, only 14 years, old, and resident of the adjoining town of Manchester, paid a visit to a friend in this city. Either through choice or necessity she remained all night on this side of the river, without, however, the smallest intention of becoming a resident.

During the night she was arrested by the police, and not having her free papers, was lodged in jail. Being perfectly ignorant of the law, and have a no one to counsel or advise her, the unfortunate creature was detained in jail 45 days, and then, by order of the Court sold for jail fees!

She was sold for the period of 45 years to pay the sum of $45 – was purchased by a negro trader and carried into captivity in a strange land, where she was sold again. We are informed that she is , if alive at this moment in Louisiana.  We do not recollect any case of oppression of the helpless, that ever brought more powerfully on our feelings.

Upon this shocking act legal of oppression and irreparable wrong, the Richmond Whig makes these just and manly reflections:

“Can we expect the blessing of heaven upon our institutions, when such an occurrence as that narrated above is the legitimate fruit of one of the laws?  Sensitive as we are to the opinions of foreigners — we expect them to entertain a very exalted opinion of our country and its legislation was such an example directly before their eyes? A complaint is already very general, that the man who has money enough, may commit any crime without meeting the extreme penalty of the law ”

(Having reported the Richmond Whig’s record of this event, TJ continues with his own comm 

MESSRS. EDITORS:

As a comment on the relative conditions of the “English Tenant and American Slave, or even the freed colored person, drawn by the far-fetched reasoning of the writer of a “Recent Ramble among the English Peasantry” you will please give the above copied from the Philadelphia Ledger of Feb 8, 1844, a place in your paper and you will oblige.

The citizen of the U.S. boasts of and is justly celebrated for the refined attention and respect he pays to woman, but it appears that when he finds her

“Guilty of a skin
Not colored like his own; and having pow’r
T’ inforce the wrong,  for such a worthy cause
Dooms and devotes her as his lawful prey.”  

Even at the young and tender age of 14, it appears that he has institutions and laws that will ruthlessly rob her of every known natural right and all her “inalienable rights” excepting life;  and an upright, merciful and justice dealing judicatory, to execute those laws by selling her to 45 years of slavery for jail fees of $45 incurred by imprisonment of 45 days for the heinous crime of —accidentally sleeping part of the night on the north bank of the James River instead of the south.

ONE WHO HAS BEEN AN ENGLISH TENANT