Why can they not make a law to make them stay on board when in port ? We
would not suffer slaves to come on board to work. We can get a plenty of white
men now at all times, and they are allowed to do twice the work that slaves will,
and it is much more profitable to the ship ; and then we should not be forced to take
60 many outcast foreigners in our cabins as stewards and also cooks, only because
they are whites.
1 will finish now. I have answered Mr. Davis ; and 1 hope he will now inquire
into the subject before he asks such a question again.
Respectfully, your obedient servant,

CHARLES A. RANLETT, a Ship-master of Boston.
Hon. R. C. WiNTHROF, Washington.
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26

I think there is enough, sir, in this one letter, if it be accurate, to justify
the word abuse, which I used in regard to ttie execution of these arbitrary
laws in the Southern ports. But I have somewhere a memorandum which
was sent me some years ago, when I made a report on this subjf^ct in the
other House, from which it would seem that these abuses were even more
serious than this letter would represent them to be. It is a memorandum,
for the correctness of which I will not vouch, and which I hope is as extrav-
agant as it certainly seems to be on its face. But from this it would seem
that the number of colored seamen imprisoned in New Orleans during a
single year was twelve hundred, in Charleston five hundred, in Savannah
three hundred, and in Alabama five hundred.
