The one at
Louisville lauded very much the pork packing establishments in this
town, and said those at Chicago, and even those of Cincinnati, are not
to be compared with them; but without better statistics we must leave
this question undecided, for papa saw quite enough at Chicago to deter
him from wishing to go through the same sight at Louisville; we,
however, availed ourselves of the address he gave us of the largest
slave-dealer, and went to-day to see a slave-pen.
We have lately been reading a most harrowing work, called the
"Autobiography of a Female Slave," whose experience was entirely
confined to Kentucky--indeed, to Louisville and the adjoining country
within a few miles of the Ohio. She describes Kentucky as offering the
worst specimen of a slave's life, and gives a horrid account of the
barbarity of the masters, and of the almost diabolical character of the
slave-dealers, and of those who hold subordinate situations under them.
We were hardly prepared, therefore, on reaching this pen to be received,
in the absence of the master, by a good-looking coloured housekeeper,
with a face as full of kindness and benevolence as one could wish to
see, but "the pen" had yesterday been cleared out, with the exception of
one woman with her six little children, the youngest only a year old,
and two young brothers, neither of whom the dealer had sold, as he had
been unable to find a purchaser who would take them without separating
them, and he was determined not to sell them till he could.
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