Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 17.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

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‘ [136] myself salute you on the Lord Jesus. We have heard of a division of women and children, and would be glad of a share—viz., a young woman or a girl and a boy, if you think good.’

Do we not hear Winthrop himself recount how the Pequods were taken ‘through the Lord's great mercy, of whom the males were sent to Bermuda and the females distributed through the bay towns, to be employed as domestic servants’? Did not the prisoners of King Philip's war suffer a similar fate? Is it not written that when one hundred and fifty Indians came voluntarily into the Plymouth garrison they were all sold into captivity beyond the seas? Did not Downing declare to Winthrop, ‘if upon a just war the Lord should deliver them (the Narragansetts), we might easily have men, women, and children enough to exchange for Moors, which will be more gainful pillage to us than we can conceive, for I do not see how we can thrive until we get in a stock of slaves sufficient to do all our business’? Were not choice parcels of negro boys and girls consigned to Boston from the Indies, and advertised and sold at auction, until after independence was declared? Was not the first slaveship in America fitted out by the Pilgrim Colony? Was not the first statute establishing slavery enacted in Massachusetts in 1641, with a certain comic comprehensiveness providing that there should ‘never be any bond slavery unless it be of captives taken in just war, or of such as willingly sold themselves or were sold to them’? Did not the United Colonies of New England constitute the first American Confederacy that recognized slavery? and was not the first fugitive slave law originated at their bidding? All this is true. Speak slowly, then, O! man of the North, against the Southern slave owners, or the Southern Chief, lest you cast down the images of your ancestors, and their spirits rise to rebuke you for treading harshly on their graves. On days of public festival, when you hold them up as patterns of patriotism, take care lest you be accused of passing the counterfeit coin of praise. Disturb not too rudely the memories of the men who defended slavery; say naught of moral obliquity, lest the venerable images of Winthrop and Endicott be torn from the historic pages of the Pilgrim Land, and the fathers of Plymouth Rock be cast into utter darkness.