This text is part of:
[10] vest. His vest was removed and his breast and neck exposed. His shoes and stockings were next taken off and his legs beneath the knees examined. His other garment was then loosened, and his naked body, from the upper part of the abdomen to the knees, was shamelessly exhibited to the view of the spectators. “Turn round!” said the body-seller. The negro obeyed, and his uncovered body from the shoulders to the calves of his legs was laid bare to criticism. Not a word, not a look of disgust condemned this degrading, demoralizing and cowardly exhibition. “You see, gentlemen,” said the auctioneer, “he's perfectly sound and a very finely formed nigger.” He was sold for $700--about two-thirds only of the price he would have brought, if his masters could have given him that certificate of soulless manhood which the Southrons style, when they refer to the existence of the passive-obedience spirit in a slave, “a good character.” A good name is a very unfortunate thing for a negro to possess. I determined, then and there, in my future intercourse with slaves, to urge them to cultivate as a religious duty all the habits which would speedily brand them as men of bad morals! These scenes occurred on the 30th of March, 1854.
A. B. Burdick, 1859.
Tufts University provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.