Let us look at the conduct of our Northern brethren in another connection, and that in the worst feature with regard to slavery, and in doing so let us bear in mind that the superior morality and love of freedom in the North is supposed to have been peculiarly evinced in the suppression of this institution. If the Northern people were so zealous in freeing the negroes from slavery, had they not been as active in putting them into slavery?
There is an old proverb, that the receiver is as bad as the thief. Unless history very much belies them, the righteous New Englanders, notwithstanding their pious abhorrence of slavery, have given a new reading to this old saw, i. e., that the receiver is worse than the thief. They thought it no sin to fit out ships to steal negroes to sell to Southerners, but their righteous souls were vexed at the idea that we should keep them in slavery after purchasing them.
During the four years that the ports of this State were opened for the slave trade (1804-1807), of the 202 vessels that arrived in Charleston harbor with slaves, 61 claimed to belong to Charleston, and exactly the same number avowedly belonged to New England (i. e., Rhode Island 59, Boston 1, Connecticut 1); 70 belonged to Britain. Of the other 10, 3 belonged to Baltimore, 4 to Norfolk, 2 to Sweden, 1 to France.
I say the same number (61) claimed to belong to Charleston as avowedly belonged to New England, and, in using this expression, I, of course, mean to express my doubt if they did. I mean to say that a great number of these vessels which were claimed to belong to Charleston did not belong to Charleston, but were in fact owned by New Englanders or Old Englanders. If we look at the list of consignees we will see that I am not probably mistaken in this supposition. Of the 202 vessels which brought in slaves, but 13 consignees were natives of Charleston, while 88 were natives of Rhode Island, 91 of Boston, and 10 of France. We may be very sure that every vessel really owned in Charleston was consigned to a Charlestonian, and we will not be very far wrong if we assume that all the 88 vessels bringing slaves to Charleston, consigned to natives of Rhode Island, in fact belonged to Rhode Islanders, or at least to New Englanders.
