' The other man said nothing. I stopped the carriage and asked one of
the slave drivers why these men were chained, and how they came to take the
matter so differently. The answer explained the mystery. One of them, it
appeared, was married, but his wife belonged to a neighboring planter, not
to his master. When the general move was made the proprieter of the female
not choosing to part with her, she was necessarily left behind. The
wretched husband was therefore shackled to a young unmarried man who
having no such tie to draw him back might be more safely trusted on the
journey."[20]
[Footnote 20: Basil Hall, _Travels in North America_ (Edinburgh, 1829),
III, 128, 129. _See also_ for similar scenes, Adam Hodgson, _Letters from
North America_ (London, 1854), I, 113.]
Timothy Flint wrote after observing many of these caravans: "The slaves
generally seem fond of their masters, and as much delighted and interested
in their migration as their masters. It is to me a very pleasing and
patriarchal sight."[21] But Edwin L. Godkin, who in his transit of a
Mississippi swamp in 1856 saw a company in distress, used the episode as a
peg on which to hang an anti-slavery sentiment: "I fell in with an emigrant
party on their way to Texas.
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