In the trade of human flesh all these cruel traits
became valuable; they enabled him to demand a good price for his
services. Initiated in all the mysteries of the trade, he was soon
entrusted with gangs of very considerable extent; then he made
purchases, laid plans to entrap free negroes, performed the various
intricacies of procuring affidavits with which to make slave
property out of free flesh. Nature was nature, and what was hard in
him soon became harder; he could crib "doubtful white stuff" that
was a nuisance among folks, and sell it for something he could put
in his pocket. In this way Romescos accumulated several hundred
dollars; but avarice increased, and with it his ferocity. It
belonged to the trade, a trade of wanton depravity. He became the
terror of those who assumed to look upon a negro's sufferings with
sympathy, scoffing at the finer feelings of mankind. Twice had his
rapacity been let loose-twice had it nearly brought him to the
gallows, or to the tribunal of Judge Lynch. And now, when completely
inured in the traffic of human flesh,--that traffic which transposes
man into a demon, his progress is checked for a while by a false
step.
It was this; and this only to the deep disgrace of the freest and
happiest country on earth. A poor orphan girl, like many of her
class in our hospitable slave world, had been a mere cast-off upon
the community. She knew nothing of the world, was ignorant, could
neither read nor write,--something quite common in the south, but
seldom known in New England.
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