Note 18 — AMERICAN SLAVE-TRADE.

Judge Morrel, in his charge to the grand jury of Washington, at the session of the circuit court of the United States, in January 1816, for the district of Columbia, urged this subject to its attention very emphatically, as an object of remonstrance and juridical investigation. He said the frequency with which the streets of the city had been crowded with manacled captives, sometimes even on the sabbath, could not fail to shock the feelings of all humane persons; that it was repugnant to the spirit of our political institutions, and the rights of man, and he believed was calculated to impair the public morals, by familiarizing scenes of cruelty to the minds of youth.