This Alone, Without Taking Into Consideration The Outrages Inflicted On The Race By Their Cruel Oppressors, Supplies A Sufficient Cause For Such A Tendency, If Every Other Were Wanting.

Passing through the principal street the day before I left St Louis, an assembly of men, chiefly overseers and negro dealers, who stood at the entrance of a large store, attracted my attention.

Large placards, with a description of various lots of negroes to be submitted to public competition, soon told me I should now be able to gratify my curiosity by witnessing a Missouri slave-vendue. A man with a bell, which he rang most energetically at the door, shortly after summoned the company, the auction being about to commence. On a table inside, a negress, of a little over middle age, was standing, vacantly gazing with grief-worn countenance on the crowd that now thronged to the table. On the floor stood two children, of about the ages of ten and thirteen respectively. The auctioneer, with the customary volubility of such men in America, began by stating, that the lots now to be offered were the remnants of a preceding sale, which he gratuitously observed had been a most satisfactory one, and after dilating with some energy on the good qualities of the woman before us, whose face brightened up a little on hearing such a flattering account of her good qualities, he earnestly requested a bidding. The poor creature was evidently in ill-health. After the most revolting questions had been put to her, and her person examined by the competitors with disgraceful familiarity, she was pronounced all but worthless, "used up," as one of the company observed, and was, after much demur on the part of the auctioneer, knocked down for two hundred dollars; this sum being, as he remarked, but the moiety of what she ought to have realized.

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