There is reason to believe that the sufferings of white slaves were not
often greater than is the natural incident of slavery. An important
authority presents this point in an interesting light. It is that of
General Eaton, for some time consul of the United States at Tunis, and
conqueror of Derne. In a letter to his wife, dated at Tunis, April 6,
1799, and written amidst opportunities of observation such as few have
possessed, he briefly describes the condition of this unhappy class,
illustrating it by a comparison less flattering to our country than to
Barbary. "Many of the Christian slaves," he says, "have died of grief,
and the others linger out a life less tolerable than death. Alas!
remorse seizes my whole soul, when I reflect that this is, indeed,
but a copy of the very barbarity which my eyes have seen in my own
native country. And yet we boast of liberty and national justice.
How frequently, in the Southern States of my own country, have I
seen weeping mothers leading the guiltless infants to the sales with
as deep anguish as if they led them to the slaughter, and yet felt
my bosom tranquil in the view of these aggressions upon defenceless
humanity! But when I see the same enormities practised upon beings
whose complexion and blood claim kindred with my own, I curse the
perpetrators, and weep over the wretched victims of their rapacity.
_Indeed, truth and justice demand from me the confession, that the
Christian slaves among the barbarians of Africa are treated with more
humanity than the African slaves among the professing Christians of
civilized America._ And yet here sensibility bleeds at every pore for
the wretches whom fate has doomed to slavery."[152] These words are
explicit, although more terrible for us than for the Barbary States.
[152] Life of General Eaton, p. 154.