Excerpt from Reminiscences of Fugitive-Slave Law Days in Boston

The following communication has been given to the writer by Captain Austin Bearse. Mr. Bearse is a native of Barnstable, Cape Cod. He is well known to our Boston citizens and merchants.

I am a native of the State of Massachusetts. Between the years of 1818 and 1830, I was from time to time mate on board of different vessels engaged in the coasting trade on the coast of South Carolina. It is well known that many New England vessels are in the habit of spending their winters on the Southern coast, in pursuit of this business for vessels used to run up the rivers for the rough rice and cotton of the plantations, which we took to Charleston. We often carried gangs of slaves to the plantations as they had been ordered. These slaves were generally collected by Slave-traders in Charleston, brought there by various causes, such as the death of Owners and the division of estates, which threw them into the market. Some were sent as punishment for insubordination, or because the domestic establishment was too large 3 or because persons moving to the North and West preferred selling their slaves to the trouble of carrying them. We had on board our vessels, from time to time, numbers of these slaves sometimes two or three, and sometimes as high as seventy oreighty. They were separated from their families and connections with as little concern as calves and pigs are selected out of a lot of domestic animals. Our vessel used to lie at a place called Poor Man's Hole, not far from the city. We used to allow the relatives and friends of the slaves to come on board and stay all night with their friends, before the vessel sailed. In the morning it used to be my business to pull off the hatches and warn them that it was time to separate, and the shrieks and cries at these times were enough to make anybody's heart ache. In the year 1828, while mate of the brig Milton, of Boston, bound from Charleston, S. C., to New Orleans, the following incident occurred, which I shall never forget. The traders brought on board four quadroon men in handcuffs. An old negro woman, more than eighty years of age, came screaming after them, My son! Oh, my son! She seemed almost frantic, and when we had got more than a mile out in the harbor, we heard her screaming yet. When we were in the Gulf Stream, I came to the men and took off their handcuffs. They were resolute fellows, and they told me I would see they would never live to be slaves in New Orleans. One of them was a carpenter and one a blacksmith. We brought them into New Orleans, and consigned them over to the agent. The agent told the captain that in forty-eight hours afterwards they were all dead men, having every one killed himself as they said they should. One of them I know was bought for a fireman on the steamer Post Boy, that went down to the Balize. He jumped overboard and was drowned.

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