“Will be sold on Saturday, 10th inst. at 12 o’clock, at the city exchange, St. Louis street.”

Then follows a description of the slaves, closing with the same assertion, which forms the caption of the advertisement “ALL ACCLIMATED.”

General Felix Houston, of Natchez, advertises in the “Natchez
Courier,” April 6, 1838, “Thirty five very fine acclimated Negroes.”

Without inserting more advertisements, suffice it to say, that when slaves are advertised for sale or hire, in the lower southern country, if they are natives, or have lived in that region long enough to become acclimated, it is invariably stated.

But we are not left to conjecture the amount of suffering experienced by slaves from the north in undergoing the severe process of ‘seasoning’ to the climate, or ‘acclimation’ A writer in the New Orleans Argus, September, 1830, in an article on the culture of the sugar cane, says; ’The loss by death in bringing slaves from a northern climate, which our planters are under the necessity of doing, is not less than TWENTY-FIVE PER CENT.’

Nothwithstanding the immense amount of suffering endured in the process of acclimation, and the fearful waste of life, and the notoriety of this fact, still the ‘public opinion’ of Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, Missouri, &c. annually DRIVES to the far south, thousands of their slaves to undergo these sufferings, and the ‘public opinion,’ of the far south buys them, and forces the helpless victims to endure them.

THE ‘PROTECTION’ VOUCHSAFED BY ‘PUBLIC OPINION,’ TO LIBERTY.

This is shown by hundreds of advertisements in southern papers, like the following: 

From the “Mobile Register,” July 21. 1837.  “WILL BE SOLD CHEAP FOR CASH, in front of the Court House of Mobile County, on the 22d day of July next, one mulatto man named HENRY HALL, WHO SAYS HE IS FREE; his owner or owners, if any, having failed to demand him, he is to be sold according to the statute in such cases made and provided, to pay Jail fees.

WM. MAGEE, Sh’ff M.C.”

From the “Grand Gulf (Miss.) Advertiser,” Dec. 7, 1838.

“COMMITTED to the jail of Chickasaw Co.  Edmund, Martha, John and Louisa; the man 50, the woman 35, John 3 years old, and Louisa 14 months.  They say they are FREE and were decoyed to this state.”

The “Southern Argus,” of July 25, 1837, contains the following.

“RANAWAY from my plantation, a negro boy named William.  Said boy was taken up by Thomas Walton, and says he was free, and that his parents live near Shawneetown, Illinois, and that he was taken from that place in July 1836; says his father’s name is William, and his mother’s Sally Brown, and that they moved from Fredericksburg, Virginia.  I will give twenty dollars to any person who will deliver said boy to me or Col.  Byrn, Columbus.  SAMUEL H. BYRN”