"The same day we visited one of the well-known slave-trading
establishments at Alexandria. On passing to it we were shewn the
costly mansion of its late proprietor, who has lately retired on
a large property acquired by the sale of native born Americans.
In an open enclosure, with high walls which it is impossible to
scale, with a strong iron-barred door, and in which we were told
that there were sometimes from three to four hundred persons
crowded, we saw about fifty slaves. Amongst the number thus
incarcerated was a woman with nine children, who had been
cruelly separated from their husband and father, and would
probably be shortly sent to New Orleans, where they would never
be likely to see him again, and where the mother may be for ever
severed from every one of her children, and each of them sold to
a separate master. From thence we went to the Alexandria city
jail, where we saw a young man who was admitted to be free even
by the jailer himself. He had been seized and committed in the
hope that he might prove a slave, and that the party detaining
him would receive a reward.
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