tening his feet and hands to the trees, having previously made him take off all his clothing except his trowsers. When he had sufficiently secured this poor creature, he beat him for several minutes with a green switch more than six fcet long; while he was writhing with anguish, endeavoring in vain to break the cords with which he was bound, and incessantly crying out, "Lord, master! do pardon me this time! do, master, have mercy!" These expressions have recurred to me a thousand times since; and although they came from one that is not considered among the sons of men, yet I think they are well worthy of remembrance, as they might lead a wise man to consider whether such shall receive mercy from the righteous Judge, as never showed mercy to their fellow men. "At length I arrived at the dwelling of a planter of my acquaintance, with whom I passed the night. At about eight o'clock in the evening I heard the barking of several dogs, mingled with the most agonizing cries that I ever heard from any human being. Soon after the gentleman came in, and began to apologize, by saying that two of his runaway slaves had just been brought home; and as he had previously tried every species of punishment upon them without effect, he knew not what else to add, except to set his blood hounds upon them. And,' continued he, 'one of them has been so badly bitten that he has been trying to die. I am only sorry that he did not; for then I should not have been further troubled with him. If he lives I intend to send him to Natchez or to New Orleans, to work with the ball and chain.' "From this last remark I understood that private individuals have the right of thus subjecting their unmanageable slaves. I have since seen numbers of these ball and chain' men, both in Natchez and New Orleans, but I do not know whether there were any among them except the state convicts. "As the summer was drawing towards a close, and the yellow fever beginning to prevail in town, I went to reside some months in the country. This was the cotton picking season, during which, the planters say, there is a greater necessity for logging than at any other time. And I can assure you, that as I have sat in my window night after night, while the cotton was being weighed, I have heard the crack of the whip, without much intermission, for a whole hour, from no less than three plantations, some of which were a full mile distant. "I found that the slaves were kept in the field from daylight until dark; and then, if they had not gathered what the master or overseer thought sufficient, they were subjected to the lash. "Many by such treatment are induced to run away and take up their lodging in the woods. I do not say that all who run away are thus closely pressed, but I do know that many are; and I have known no less than a dozen desert at a time from the same plantation, in consequence of the overseer's forcing them to work to the extent of their power, and then whipping them for not having done more. "But suppose that they run away-what is to become of them in the forest? If they cannot steal they must perish of hunger-if the nights are cold, their feet will be frozen; for if they make a fire they may be discovered, and be shot at. If they attempt to leave the country, their chance of success is about nothing. They must return, be whipped-if old offenders, wear the collar, per. haps be branded, and fare worse than before. "Do you believe it, sir, not six months since, I saw a number of my Christian neighbors packing up provisions, as I supposed for a deer hunt; but as I was about offering myself to the party, I learned that their powder and balls were destined to a very different purpose: it was, in short, the design of the party to bring home a number of runaway slaves, or to shoot them if they should not be able to get possession of them in any other way. "You will ask, Is not this murder? Call it, sir, by what name you please, such are the facts:many are shot every year, and that too while the masters say they treat their slaves well. "But let me turn your attention to another species of cruelty. About a year since I knew a certain slave who had deserted his master, to be caught, and for the first time fastened to the stocks. In those same stocks, from which at midnight I have heard cries of distress, while the master slept, and was dreaming, perhaps, of drink. ing wine and of discussing the price of cotton. On the next morning he was chained in an immovable posture, and branded in both cheeks with red hot stamps of iron. Such are the tender mer. cies of men who love wealth, and are determined to obtain it at any price. "Suffer me to add another to the list of enormi. ties, and I will not offend you with more. "There was, some time since, brought to trial in this town a planter residing about fifteen miles distant, for whipping his slave to death. You will suppose, of course, that he was punished. No, sir, he was acquitted, although there could be no doubt of the fact. I heard the tale of murder from a man who was acquainted with all the circumstances. I was,' said he, 'passing along the road near the burying-ground of the plantation, about nine o'clock at night, when I saw se. veral lights gleaming through the woods; and as I approached, in order to see what was doing, I beheld the coroner of Natchez, with a number of men, standing around the body of a young female, which by the torches seemed almost perfectly white. On inquiry I learned that the master had so unmercifully beaten this girl that she died under the operation: and that also he had so severely punished another of his slaves that he was but just alive." We here rest the case for the present, so far as respects the presentation of facts showing the condition of the slaves, and proceed to consider the main objections which are usually employed to weaken such testimony, or wholly to set it aside. But before we enter upon the examination of spe. cific objections, and introductory to them, we remark, 1. That the system of slavery must be a sys. tem of horrible cruelty, follows of necessity, from the fact that two millions seven hundred thousand human beings are held by force, and used as arti cles of property. Nothing but a heavy yoke, and an iron one, could possibly keep so many necks in the dust. That must be a constant and mighty pressure which holds so still such a vast army; nothing could do it but the daily experience of severities, and the ceaseless dread and certainty of the most terrible inflictions if they should dare to toss in their chains. 2. Were there nothing else to prove it a system of monstrous cruelty, the fact that FEAR is the only motive with which the slave is plied during his whole existence, would be sufficient to brand it with execration as the grand tormentor of man. The slave's susceptibility of pain is the sole ful. crum on which slavery works the lever that moves him. In this it plants all its stings; here it sinks its hot irons; cuts its deep gashes; flings its burning embers, and dashes its boiling brine and liquid fire: into this it strikes its cold flesh hooks, grapgling irons, and instruments of nameless torture; and by it drags him shrieking to the end of his pilgrimage. The fact that the master inflicts pain upon the slave not merely as an end to gratify passion, but constantly as a means of extorting labor, is enough of itself to show that the system of slavery is unmixed cruelty. 3. That the slaves must suffer frequent and terrible inflictions, follows inevitably from the character of those who direct their labor. What ever may be the character of the slaveholders themselves, all agree that the overscers are, as a class, most abandoned, brutal, and desperate men. This is so well known and believed that any testimony to prove it seems needless. The testimony of come to the tables of their employers; yet they have the constant control of all the human cattle that belong to the master. "These men are continually advancing from their low station to the higher one of masters. These changes bring into the possession of power a class of men of whose mental and moral qualities I have already spoken." Rev. HORACE MOULTON, of Marlboro', Massachusetts, who lived in Georgia several years, says of them, "The overseers are generally loose in their morals; it is the object of masters to employ those whom they think will get the most work out of their hands, hence those who whip and torment the slaves the most are in many instances called the best overseers. The masters think those whom the slaves fear the most are the best. Quite a portion of the masters employ their own slaves as overscers, or rather they are called drivers; these are more subject to the will of the masters than the white overseers are; some of them are as lordly as an Austrian prince, and sometimes more cruel even than the whites." That the overseers are, as a body, sensual, brutal, and violent men is proverbial. The tender mercies of such men must be cruel. 4. The ownership of human beings necessarily presupposes an utter disregard of their happiness. He who assumes it monopolizes their whole capi. tal, leaves them no stock on which to trade, and out of which to make happiness. Whatever is the master's gain is the slave's loss, a loss wrested from him by the master, for the express purpose of making it his own gain; this is the master's constant employment-forcing the slave to toil Mr. WIRT, late Attorney General of the United violently wringing from him all he has and all he gets, and using it as his own;-like the vile bird that never builds its nest from materials of its own States, a Virginian and a slaveholder, is as follows. In his life of Patrick Henry, p. 36, speak. ing of the different classes of society in Virginia, gathering, but either drives other birds from theirs and takes possession of them, or tears them in pieces to get the means of constructing their own. This daily practice of forcibly robbing others, and he says,-"Last and lowest a feculum, of beings called 'overseers' the most abject, degraded, unprincipled race, always cap in hand to the dons who employ them, and furnishing materials for the exercise of their pride, insolence, and spirit of habitually living on the plunder, cannot but be.. get in the mind the habit of regarding the interests and happiness of those whom it robs, as of no sort of consequence in comparison with its own; con sequently whenever those interests and this happiness are in the way of its own gratification, they will be sacrificed without scruple. He who cannot see this would be unable to feel it, if it were seen. OBJECTION I. - SUCH CRUELTIES ARE INCREDIBLE. The THE enormities inflicted by slaveholders upon | names which they call them are the same and simi. their slaves will never be discredited except by ilar to those given to their horses and oxen. those who overlook the simple fact, that he who | laws of slave states make them property, equally holds human beings as his bona fide property, regards them as property, and not as persons; this is his permanent state of mind toward them. He does not contemplate slaves as human beings, con. sequently does not treat them as such; and with entire indifference sees them suffer privations and writhe under blows, which, if inflicted upon whites, would fill him with horror and indignation. He regards that as good treatment of slaves, which would seem to him insufferable abuse if practiced upon others; and would de. nounce that as a monstrous outrage and horrible cruelty, if perpretated upon white men and wo. men, which he sees every day meted out to black slaves, without perhaps ever thinking it cruel. Accustomed all his life to regard them rather as domestic animals, to hear them stormed at, and to see them cuffed and caned; and being himself in the constant habit of treating them thus, such practices have become to him a mere matter of course, and make no impression on his mind. True, it is incredible that men should treat as chattels those whom they truly regard as human beings; but that they should treat as chattels and working animals those whom they regard as such is no marvel. The common treatment of dogs, when they are in the way, is to kick them out of it; we see them every day kicked off the sidewalks, and out of shops, and on Sabbaths out of churches,-yet, as they are but dogs, these do not strike us as outrages; yet, if we were to see men, women, and children-our neighbors and friends, kicked out of stores by merchants, or out of churches by the deacons and sexton, we should call the perpetrators inhuman wretches. We have said that slaveholders regard their slaves not as human beings, but as mere working animals, or merchandise. The whole vocabulary of slaveholders, their laws, their usages, and their entire treatment of their slaves fully establish this. The same terms are applied to slaves that are given to cattle. They are called "stock." So when the children of slaves are spoken of prospectively, they are called their "increase;" the same term that is applied to flocks and herds. So the female slaves that are mothers, are called "breeders" till past child bearing; and often the same terms are applied to the different sexes that are applied to the males and females among cattle. Those who compel the labor of slaves and cattle have the same appellation, "drivers:" the with goats and swine; they are levied upon for debt in the same way; they are included in the same advertisements of public sales with cattle, swine, and asses; when moved from one part of the country to another, they are herded in droves like cattle, and like them urged on by drivers; their labor is compelled in the same way. They are bought and sold, and separated like cattle: when exposed for sale, their good qualities are described as jockies show off the good points of their horses; their strength, activity, skill, power of endurance, &c. are lauded, and those who bid upon them examine their persons, just as purchasers inspect horses and oxen; they open their mouths to see if their teeth are sound; strip their backs to see if they are badly scarred, and handle their limbs and muscles to see if they are firmly knit. Like horses, they are warranted to be "sound," or to be returned to the owner if "unsound." A father gives his son a horse and a slave; by his will he distributes among them his racc-horses, hounds, game-cocks, and slaves. We leave the reader to carry out the parallel which we have only begun. Its details would cover many pages. That slaveholders do not practically regard slaves as human beings is abundantly shown by their own voluntary testimony. In a recent work entitled, "The South vindicated from the Treason and Fanaticism of Northern Abolitionists," which was written, we are informed, by Colonel Dayton, late member of Congress from South Carolina; the writer, speaking of the awe with which the slaves regard the whites, says, "The northerner looks upon a band of negroes as upon so many men, but the planter or southerner views them in a very different light." Extract from the speech of Mr. SUMMERS, of Virginia, in the legislature of that state, Jan. 26, 1832. See the Richmond Whig. When, in the sublime lessons of Christianity, he (the slaveholder) is taught to 'do unto others as he would have others do unto him,' HE NEVER DREAMS THAT THE DEGRADED NEGRO IS WITHIN THE PALE OF THAT HOLY CANON." PRESIDENT JEFFERSON, in his letter to GOVERNOR COLES, of Illinois, dated Aug. 25, 1814, asserts, that slaveholders regard their slaves as brutes, in the following remarkable language. "Nursed and educated in the daily habit of seeing the degraded condition, both bodily and mental, of these unfortunate beings [the slaves], FEW MINDS HAVE YET DOUBTED BUT THAT THEY WERE AS i LEGITIMATE SUBJECTS OF PROPERTY AS THEIR HORSES | dormant. The rage of proud Haman knew no OR CATTLE." Having shown that slaveholders regard their slaves as mere working animals and cattle, we now proceed to show that their actual treatment of them, is worse than it would be if they were brutes. We repeat it, SLAVEHOLDERS TREAT THEIR SLAVES WORSE THAN THEY DO THEIR BRUTES. Whoever heard of cows or sheep being deliberately tied up and beaten and lacerated till they died? or horses coolly tortured by the hour, till covered with mangled flesh, or of swine having their legs tied and being suspended from a tree and lacerat. ed with thongs for hours, or of hounds stretched and made fast at full length, flayed with whips, red pepper rubbed into their bleeding gashes, and hot brine dashed on to aggravate the torture? Yet just such forms and degrees of torture are daily perpetrated upon the slaves. Now no man that knows human nature will marvel at this. Though great cruelties have always been inflicted by men upon brutes, yet incomparably the most horrid ever perpetrated, have been those of men upon their own species. Any leaf of history turned over at random has proof enough of this. Every reflecting mind perceives that when men hold human beings as property, they must, from the nature of the case, treat them worse than they treat their horses and oxen. It is impossible for cattle to excite in men such tempests of fury as men excite in each other. Men are often pro. voked if their horses or hounds refuse to do, or their pigs refuse to go where they wish to drive them, but the feeling is rarely intense and never permanent. It is vexation and impatience, rather than settled rage, malignity, or revenge. If horses and dogs were intelligent beings, and still held as property, their opposition to the wishes of their owners, would exasperate them immeasurably more than it would be possible for them to do, with the minds of brutes. None but little chil. dren and idiots get angry at sticks and stones that lie in their way or hurt them; but put into sticks and stones intelligence, and will, and power of feeling and motion, while they remain as now, articles of property, and what a towering rage would men be in, if bushes whipped them in the face when they walked among them, or stones rolled over their toes when they climbed hills! and what exemplary vengeance would be inflicted upon door-steps and hearth-stones, if they were to move out of their places, instead of lying still where they were put for their owners to tread upon. The greatest provocation to human nature is opposition to its will. If a man's will be resisted by one far below him, the provocation is vastly greater, than when it is resisted by an acknowledged superior. In the former case, it inflames strong passions, which in the latter lie bounds against the poor Jew who would not do as he wished, and so he built a gallows for him. If the person opposing the will of another, be so far below him as to be on a level with chattels, and be actually held and used as an article of property; pride, scorn, lust of power, rage and revenge explode together upon the hapless victim. The idea of property having a will, and that too in opposition to the will of its owner, and counteracting it, is a stimulant of terrible power to the most relentless human passions; and from the nature of slavery, and the constitution of the human mind, this fierce stimulant must, with various degrees of strength, act upon slaveholders almost without ceasing. The slave, however abject and crushed, is an intelligent being: he has a will, and that will cannot be annihilated, it will show itself; if for a moment it is smothered, like pent up fires when vent is found, it flames the fiercer. Make intelligence property, and its manager will have his match; he is met at every turn by an opposing will, not in the form of down-right rebellion and defiance, but yet, visi. bly, an ever-opposing will. He sees it in the dissatisfied look, and reluctant air and unwilling movement; the constrained strokes of labor, the drawling tones, the slow hearing, the feigned stupidity, the sham pains and sickness, the short memory; and he feels it every hour, in innumerable forms, frustrating his designs by a ceaseless though perhaps invisible countermining. This unceasing opposition to the will of its owner, on the part of his rational property,' is to the slaveholder as the hot iron to the nerve. raves under it, and storms, and gnashes, and smites; but the more he smites, the hotter it gets, and the more it burns him. Further, this opposition of the slave's will to his owner's, not only excites him to severity, that he may gratify his rage, but makes it necessary for him to use violence in breaking down this resistance-thus subjecting the slave to additional tortures. There is another inducement to cruel inflictions upon the slave, and a necessity for it, which does not exist in the case of brutes. Offenders must be made an example to others, to strike them with terror. If a slave runs away and is caught, his master flogs him with terrible severity, not merely to gratify his resentment, and to keep him from running away again, but as a warning to others. So in every case of disobedience, neglect, stubbornness, unfaithfulness, indolence, insolence, theft, feigned sickness, when his directions are forgotten, or slighted, or supposed to be, or his wishes crossed, or his property injured, or left exposed, or his work ill-executed, the master is tempted to inflict cruelties, not merely to wreak his own vengeance upon him, and to make the He slave more circumspect in future, but to sustain would chariabity hope there are some) I fear the A multitude of facts, illustrating the position that slaveholders treat their slaves worse than they do their cattle, will occur to all who are familiar with slavery. When cattle break through their owners' inclosures and escape, if found, they are driven back and fastened in again; and even slaveholders would execrate as a wretch, the man who should tie them up, and bruise and lacerate them for straying away; but when slaves that have escaped are caught, they are flogged with the most terrible severity. When herds of cattle are driven to market, they are suffered to go in the easiest way, each by himself; but when slaves are driven to market, they are fastened together with handcuffs, galled by iron collars and chains, and thus forced to travel on foot hundreds of miles, sleeping at night in their chains. Sheep, and sometimes horned cattle are marked with their owners' initials-but this is generally done with paint, and of course produces no pain. Slaves, too, are often marked with their owners' initials, but the letters are stamped into their flesh with a hot iron. Cattle are suffered to graze their pastures without stint; but the slaves are restrained in their food to a fixed allowance. The slaveholders' horses are notoriously far better fed, more moderately worked, have fewer hours of labor, and longer intervals of rest than their slaves; and their valuable horses are far more comfortably housed and lodged, and their stables more effectually defended from the weather, than the slaves' huts. We have here merely begun a comparison, which the reader can easily carry out at length, from the materials furnished in this work. We will, however, subjoin a few testimonies of slaveholders, and others who have resided in slave states, expressly asserting that slaves are treated worse than brutes. The late Dr. GEORGE BUCHANAN, of Baltimore, Maryland, a member of the American Philosoph. ical Society, in an oration delivered in Baltimore, July 4, 1791, page 10, says: "The Africans whom you despise, whom you more inhumanly treat than brutes, are equally capable of improvement with yourselves," Mr. RICE, of Kentucky in his speech in the "He [the slave] is a rational creature, reduced Rev. HORACE MOULTON, a minister of the Me thodist Episcopal Church, in Marlborough, Mass. who lived some years in Georgia, says: "The southern horses and dogs have enough to eat, and good care is taken of them; but southern negroes-who can describe their misery and their wretchedness, their nakedness and their cruel scourgings! None but God. Should we whip our horses as they whip their slaves, even for small offences, we should expose ourselves to the penalty of the law." Rev. PHINEAS SMITH, Centreville, Allegany county, New York, who has resided four years in the midst of southern slavery "Avarice and cruelty are twin sisters; and I do not hesitate to declare before the world, as my deliberate opinion, that there is less compassion for working slaves at the south, than for working oxen at the north." STEPHEN SEWALL, Esq. Winthrop, Maine, a member of the Congregational Church, and late agent of the Winthrop Manfacturing Company, who resided five years in Alabama, says "I do not think that brutes, not even horses, are treated with so much cruelty as American slaves." If the preceding considerations are insufficient to remove incredulity respecting the cruelties suffered by slaves, and if northern objectors still say, We might believe such things of savages, but that civilized men, and republicans, in this Christian country, can openly and by system perpetrate such enormities, is impossible-to such we reply, that this incredulity of the people of the free states, is not only discreditable to their intelligence, but to their consistency. Who is so ignorant as not to know, or so incredulous as to disbelieve, that the early Baptists of New England were fined, imprisoned, scourg The Rev. GEORGE WHITEFIELD, in his cele-ed, and finally banished by our puritan fore brated letter to the slaveholders of Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Georgia, written one hundred years ago, (See Benezet's Caution to Great Britain and her Colonies, page 13), says: "Sure I am, it is sinful to use them as bad, nay worse than if they were brutes; and whatever particular exceptions there may be, (as I fathers?-and that the Quakers were confined in 4 1 |