In May, 1831, Lincoln and a few companions went to New Orleans on a
flat-boat and remained there a month. It was there that he witnessed for
the first time negro men and women sold like animals. The poor beings
were chained, whipped and scourged. “Against this inhumanity his sense
of right and justice rebelled, and his mind and conscience were awakened
to a realization of what he had often heard and read,” writes one of
his biographers, Ida M. Tarbell. One morning, in his rambles with his
friends over the city, he passed a slave auction. A comely mulatto girl
of vigorous physique was being sold. She underwent a thorough examination
at the hands of the bidders; they pinched her flesh, and made her trot up
and down the room like a horse to show how she moved, and in order, as
the auctioneer said, that “bidders might satisfy themselves” whether the
article they were offering to buy was sound or not. “The whole thing was
so revolting that Lincoln moved away from the scene with a deep feeling
of unconquerable hate.” He remarked to his companions: “If I ever get a
chance to hit that thing (slavery) I’ll hit it hard.”