in the face of the fact that a voyage from the breeding plantations in Virginia to the market in New Orleans might, and often did, last as many days as the shorter voyages from Africa to the West Indies.
Curious tales are told regarding the working of this law. The first, so far as found by the writer hereof, is in an incidental reference in a public document quoted in Niles's Register for September 30, 1815, wherein is mentioned the fact that "a young woman named Catharine Richardson" was "in the schooner Cynthia, of New York, Charles Johnson, master." Johnson having touched at a British port, his slave managed to get ashore and found friends who secured her freedom under the British law that prohibited the importation of slaves. That occurred in 1811.
A New Orleans paper quoted in the Register for February 8, 1817, said:
"Some inhuman speculator at New York has disburthened the prison of that city of seventy or eighty negroes, by procuring their imprisonment to be commuted for transportation, and shipping them for this place — where they arrived a few days ago. But he has been disappointed of his profit, and we doubt if he will clear even the freight of his cargo. The corporation has very properly ordered the vessel containing this gang of thieves and ruffians to proceed without the limits of the city."
In that day newspapers did not employ professional humorists, but the editors wrote humor unintentionally and in spite of indignation. Fancy sending seventy able-bodied negroes beyond the limits of New Orleans, in 1817, as a means of depriving the holder of
