TONTINE COFFEE HOUSE
They come and go, these braggarts.
Dutch and English alike, with their
clay pipes and tea, clutching a wench or
servant they bring along for free. The
old Meal Market at the foot of Wall,
has now, in 1711, been turned to
brisk slave-trade platforms. We
have an auction block!
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I can hope only that they meet
their maker soon. Selling sisters
and brothers to distant lands;
breaking up families and groups.
Bastards all, they be. "I could have
sold her to good advantage," one
Cadwallader Colden, an early
NYC big-shot, spoke, in 1717,
of breaking up a mother from
her children, He sold her off to
a Barbados sugar plantation,
precisely because he wanted
to remove her from her children.
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"I could have sold her here to good
advantage, but I have several of her
children which I value and I know
should she stay in this country she
would spoil them." Thus, thus ever,
the merchant class dogs.
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