There is a general interest felt in arranging the sale so that the family may be in the same neighborhood.

This is for the interest of the owners; it promotes contentment and cheerfulness in the servants.

Cases of hardship are the exceptions to the general rule in disposing of servants.
Admitting all that can properly be said of such cases, and of the various other evils connected with it, the question recurs, What is to be done but increasingly to mitigate the sorrows of the bondmen, to cultivate a kind and generous disposition toward them, and to prepare them, as far and as fast as the good of all concerned will warrant, for any other condition which Providence may in time point out?
My belief is, that if you take four millions of laboring people anywhere under the sun, and put down in separate columns the good and the evil in their conditions, the balance of welfare and happiness, from the supply of their wants, will be found to be greater among our Southern slaves than elsewhere.

But, still, this leaves them slaves.

My reply to myself, when I say this, is, They were so in their own land; or, they were in a condition of fearful degradation and misery.