ABSTRACT
There were in the State of Delaware, a company of men who, during several years, combined together and carried on an extensive business in trading in slaves. They would frequently purchase colored people who were born free, and who were bound by indenture to serve till they were twenty-one years old, and when their time of service had nearly expired, some one of those persons would purchase them for a few dollars and clandestinely transport them to Georgia, and sell them for a high price, slaves for life. To prevent detection, they would advertise them as having run away, and they not unfrequently decoyed free people into their possession, and disposed of them in the same manner. In this way, it was believed, that in a few years, some hundreds of free men and women were reduced to slavery. The following narrative will give a pretty correct idea of the manner in which this nefarious business was conducted. In the year 1803, Thomas Hope, 2 of Philadelphia, published a pamphlet of forty pages, under the signature of “Humanitas,” from memoranda which I furnished him. The following is mostly extracted from that work.
