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On what ground did you enact the intermediate state of indenture apprenticeship, and on what arguments did you justify it? You felt and acknowledged that the negro had a right to be free, and that you had no right to detain him in bondage.
I am impressed with the ponderous and imposing look of an English legal document, an assignment of real estate in England, for instance, engrossed on an immense sheet of thickest paper, in a formal hand, beginning with "This Indenture" in German text, and with occasional phrases of form, breaking out into large script, very long and repetitious, fortified with the Mayor of Manchester's seal, two or three inches in diameter, which is certified by a notary-public, whose signature, again, is to have my consular certificate and official seal.
The letters patent bear the date July 12th, 1722, and were prepared in accordance with the King's instructions to the Attorney and Solicitor General sent in a letter from Kensington on June 16th, 1722. The letter commanded "that a bill should be prepared for his royal signature, containing and importing an indenture, whereof one part was to pass the Great Seal of Great Britain."
That evening at the cost of much labor he and I went over the indenture word for word, and when we had finished Sir George thought it was very good indeed. He seemed to think that all difficulties in the way of the marriage were overcome when the agreement that lay before us on the table had been achieved between him and the earl.
After much controversy, Indiana, in 1816, framed a state constitution which reiterated the language of the Northwest Ordinance, but without invalidating titles to existing slave property; while Illinois was admitted to the Union in 1818 with seven or eight hundred slaves upon her soil, and with a constitution which continued the old system of indenture with slight modification.
The illegally legal instrument is still in existence, with its unpunctuated jargon about "hereditaments" and "fee simple," its "and whereas the said Daniel Levy" in every other line, and its eventual plain provision for "the said sum of L15,000 to remain charged upon the security of the hereditaments in the said recited Indenture ... until the expiration of one year computed from " that summer's day in that empty tower!
Like a great harp it lay below him, and his eyes followed the coast-lines widening out in an indenture of the hills: on one side desert, on the other richly cultivated ascents, with villages and one great city, Tiberias its domes, cupolas, towers and the high cliffs abutting the lake between Tiberias and Magdala bathed in a purple glow as the sun went down.
Then, with the party complete, we passed to the northward of Khombora, by an indenture of the ground lying between it and a much larger hill, called Sagama, which hill forms the south-eastern buttress of the Usumbara masses; and opening into the valley of Pangani again, we put up at a Wazegura village on its right bank, called Kohode, crossing the river by a ferry.
These overtures I had had little hesitation in declining, for observation had taught me that the slave's place soon makes the slave's spirit, unless that slavery be an indenture unto God, which is but the sterner name for liberty.
"Please," I said, "bring me the other half of this." I flung open my bag and spread upon the nearest table my half of the record of our covenant, done, as it had seemed to me, long years ago. Colonel Meriwether and I bent over the half rigid parchment. I saw that Ellen had gone; but presently she came again, hesitating, flushing red, and put into my hands the other half of our indenture.
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