"
Such is the uncertainty of a slave's life. He goes to bed
at night the pampered servant of his young master, with whom
he has played in childhood, and who would not see his slave
abused under any consideration, and gets up in the morning
the property of a man whom he has never before seen.
To behold five or six tables in the saloon of a steamer,
with half a dozen men playing cards at each, with money, pistols,
and bowie-knives spread in splendid confusion before them,
is an ordinary thing on the Mississippi River.
CHAPTER V
THE YOUNG MOTHER
ON the fourth morning, the Patriot landed at Grand Gulf,
a beautiful town on the left bank of the Mississippi.
Among the numerous passengers who came on board
at Rodney was another slave-trader, with nine human
chattels which he was conveying to the Southern market.
The passengers, both ladies and gentlemen, were startled
at seeing among the new lot of slaves a woman so white as not
to be distinguishable from the other white women on board.
She had in her arms a child so white that no one would suppose
a drop of African blood flowed through its blue veins.
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