There was no essential difference between slaves
raised for the market in Virginia--whence they were exported and sold--and
those kidnapped for the same object on the Guinea coast. The physical
suffering of a land journey might be less than that of a long sea-voyage,
but the anguish of separation between mother and child was the same in all
cases. The chains which clanked on the limbs of the wretched creatures,
driven from the auction block along the road which passed beneath the
national capitol, and the fetters of the captured fugitive were no softer
or lighter than those forged for the cargo of the slave-ships. Yet the man
who so magnificently denounced the one in 1820, found no cause to repeat
the denunciation in 1850, when only domestic traffic was in question. The
memorial of 1819 and the oration of 1820 place the African slave-trade and
the domestic branch of the business on precisely the same ground of infamy
and cruelty. In 1850 Mr. Webster seems to have discovered that there was a
wide gulf fixed between them, for the latter wholly failed to excite the
stern condemnation poured forth by the memorialist of 1819 and the orator
of 1820.
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