[Footnote 47:  Lucien Peytraud, L’Esclavage aux Antilles Francaises avant 1789 (Paris, 1897), pp. 122, 123.]

In the chief ports of the British continental colonies the maritime transporters usually engaged merchants on shore to sell the slaves as occasion permitted, whether by private sale or at auction.  At Charleston these merchants charged a ten per cent commission on slave sales, though their factorage rate was but five per cent. on other sorts of merchandise; and they had credits of one and two years for the remittance of the proceeds.[48] The following advertisement, published at Charleston in 1785 jointly by Ball, Jennings and Company, and Smiths, DeSaussure and Darrell is typical of the factors’ announcements:  “GOLD COAST NEGROES.  On Thursday, the 17th of March instant, will be exposed to public sale near the Exchange (if not before disposed of by private contract) the remainder of the cargo of negroes imported in the ship Success, Captain John Conner, consisting chiefly of likely young boys and girls in good health, and having been here through the winter may be considered in some degree seasoned to this climate.  The conditions of the sale will be credit to the first of January, 1786, on giving bond with approved security where required—­the negroes not to be delivered till the terms are complied with."[49] But in such colonies as Virginia where there was no concentration of trade in ports, the ships generally sailed from place to place peddling their slaves, with notice published in advance when practicable.  The diseased or otherwise unfit negroes were sold for whatever price they would bring.  In some of the ports it appears that certain physicians made a practise of buying these to sell the survivors at a profit upon their restoration to health.[50]

[Footnote 48:  D.D.  Wallace, Life of Henry Laurens, p. 75.]

[Footnote 49:  The Gazette of the State of South Carolina, Mch. 10, 1785.]

[Footnote 50:  C. C. Robin, Voyages (Paris, 1806), II, 170.]

That by no means all the negroes took their enslavement grievously is suggested by a traveler’s note at Columbia, South Carolina, in 1806:  “We met ... a number of new negroes, some of whom had been in the country long enough to talk intelligibly.  Their likely looks induced us to enter into a talk with them.  One of them, a very bright, handsome youth of about sixteen, could talk well.  He told us the circumstances of his being caught and enslaved, with as much composure as he would any common occurrence, not seeming to think of the injustice of the thing nor to speak of it with indignation....  He spoke of his master and his work as though all were right, and seemed not to know he had a right to be anything but a slave."[51]

[Footnote 51:  “Diary of Edward Hooker,” in the American Historical Association Report for 1906, p. 882.]