Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division

Anti-Slavery Almanac (Boston: Webster & Southard, 1837)

Abolitionists argued that the interregional trade showed some of the worst aspects of slavery. In this vignette, the Anti-Slavery Almanac relates how a mother tried to kill her children rather than see them sold to a life of misery far away. Opponents of slavery stated that the heartlessness and lack of morality of white Southerners meant that, in response to cash enticement from the speculators, they resorted to inhumane family separations that could have fatal repercussions.