.

and social feeling and affection are violated with • indifference; slaves are treated as though they did not possess them.

Another way in which the feelings of slaves are trifled with and often deeply wounded, is by changing their names; if, at the time they are brought into a family, there is another slave of the same name; or if the owner happens, for some other reason, not to like the name of the new comer. I have known slaves very much grieved at having the names of their children thus changed, when they had been called after a dear relation. Indeed it would be utterly impossible to recount the multitude of ways in which the heart of the slave is continually lacerated by the total disregard of his feelings as a social being and a human creature.

But I forbear-the sufferings of the slaves are not only innumerable, but they are indescribable. I may paint the agony of kindred torn from each other's arms, to meet no more in time; I may depict the inflictions of the blood-stained lash, but I cannot describe the daily, hourly, ceaseless torture, endured by the heart that is constantly trampled under the foot of despotic power. This is a part of the horrors of slavery which, I believe, no one has ever attempted to delineate; I wonder not at it, it mocks all power of language. Who can describe the anguish of that mind which feels itself impaled upon the iron of arbitrary power-its living, writhing, helpless victim! every human susceptibility tortured, its syınpathies torn, and stung, and bleeding-always feeling the death-weapon in its heart, and yet not so deep as to kill that humanity which is made the curse of its existence.

In the course of my testimony I have entered somewhat into the minutiæ of slavery, because this is a part of the subject often overlooked, and

The slave suffers also greatly from being continually watched. The system of espionage which is constantly kept up over slaves is the most worrying and intolerable that can be imagined. Many mistresses are, in fact, during the absence of their husbands, really their drivers; and the pleasure cannot be appreciated by any but those who have of returning to their families often, on the part of been witnesses, and entered into sympathy with the husband, is entirely destroyed by the complaints the slaves as human beings. Slaveholders think preferred against the slaves when he comes home nothing of them, because they regard their slaves to his meals. as property, the mere instruments of their conve

A mistress of my acquaintance asked her ser-nience and pleasure. One who is a slaveholder

vant boy, one day, what was the reason she could not get him to do his work whilst his master was away, and said to him, "Your master works a great deal harder than you do; he is at his office all day, and often has to study his law cases at night." "Master," said the boy, "is working for himself, and for you, ma'am, but I am working for him." The mistress turned and remarked to a friend, that she was so struck with the truth of the remark, that she could not say a word to him.

at heart never recognises a human being in a slave. As thou hast asked me to testify respecting the physical condition of the slaves merely, I say nothing of the awful neglect of their minds and souls and the systematic effort to imbrute them. A wrong and an impiety, in comparison with which all the other unutterable wrongs of slavery are but as the dust of the balance.

GENERAL TESTIMONY

ANGELINA G. WELD.

TO THE CRUELTIES INFLICTED UPON SLAVES.

Before presenting to the reader particular de- TESTIMONY OF REV. GEORGE WHITEFIELD, tails of the cruelties inflicted upon American In a letter written by him in Georgia, and adslaves, we will present in brief the well.weigh- dressed to the slaveholders of Maryland, Vired declarations of slaveholders and other resi

dents of slave states, testifying that the slaves are treated with barbarous inhumanity. All details and particulars will be drawn out under their appropriate heads. We propose in this place to present testimony of a general character -the solemn declarations of slaveholders and

others, that the slaves are treated with great cruelty.

To discredit the testimony of witnesses who insist upon convicting themselves, would be an anomalous scepticism.

To show that American slavery has always had one uniform character of diabolical cruelty, we will go back one hundred years, and prove it by unimpeachable witnesses, who have given their deliberate testimony to its horrid barbarity, from 1739 to 1839.

ginia, North and South Carolina and Georgia, in 1739. See Benezet's "Caution to Great Britain and her Colonies."

"As I lately passed through your provinces on my way hither, I was sensibly touched with a fellow-feeling of the miseries of the poor negroes.

"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 would charitably hope there are some,) I fear the generality of you that own negroes, are liable to such a charge. Not to mention what numbers have been given up to the inhuman usage of cruel taskmasters, who by their unrelenting scourges, have ploughed their backs and made long furrows, and at length brought them to the grave!

* *

"The blood of them, spilt for these many years, in your respective provinces, will ascend up to heaven against you!"

The following is the testimony of the celebrated JOHN WOOLMAN, an eminent minister of

!

the Society of Friends, who traveled extensively him all the severity of punishment the human body in the slave states. We copy it from a "Me- is capable of bearing."

moir of JOHN WOOLMAN, chiefly extracted from a ✔ President Edwards, the Younger, in a sermon Journal of his Life and Travels." It was pub- before the Connecticut Abolition Society, 1791,/

lished in Philadelphia, by the "Society of

Friends."

"The following reflections, were written in 1757, while he was traveling on a religious account among slaveholders."

"Many of the white people in these provinces, take little or no care of negro marriages; and when negroes marry, after their own way, some make so little account of those marriages, that, with views of outward interest, they often part men from their wives, by selling them far asunder; which is common when estates are sold by executors at vendue.

with a

Many whose labor is heavy, being followed at their business in the field by a man whip, hired for that purpose,-have, in common, little else allowed them but one peck of Indian corn and some salt for one week, with a few potatocs. (The potatoes they commonly raise by their labor on the first day of the week.) The correction ensuing on their disobedience to over

seers, or slothfulness in business, is often very severe, and sometimes desperate. Men and wo. men have many times scarce clothes enough to hide their nakedness and boys and girls, ten and twelve years old, are often quite naked among their masters' children. Some use endeavors to instruct those (negro children) they have in reading; but in common, this is neglected, but disapproved."-p. 12.

not only

says:

"From these drivers, for every imagined, as well as real neglect or want of exertion, they re. ceive the lash the smack of which is all day) long in the ears of those who are on the planta. tion or in the vicinity; and it is used with such dexterity and severity, as not only to lacerate the skin, but to tear out small portions of the flesh at almost every stroke.

"This is the general treatment of the slaves. But many individuals suffer still more severely. Many, many are knocked down; some have their eyes beaten out: some have an arm or a leg brok. en, or chopped off; and many, for a very small, or for no crime at all, have been beaten to death, merely to gratify the fury of an enraged master

or overseer."

Extract from an oration, delivered at Balti. more, July 4, 1791, by GEORGE BUCHANAN, M. D., member of the American Philosophical Society.

Their situation (the slaves') is insupportable; misery inhabits their cabins, and pursues them in the field. Inhumanly beaten, they often fall sacrifices to the turbulent tempers of their masters! Who is there, unless inured to savage cruelties, that can hear of the inhuman punishments daily inflicted upon the unfortunate blacks, without a man who calls himself

feeling for them?
Can
a Christian, coolly and deliberately tie up, thumb.
screw, torture with pincers, and beat unmerci-
fully a poor slave, for perhaps a trifling neglect
of duty?-p. 14.

TESTIMONY OF HON. JOHN RANDOLPH, OF ROANOKE-
Mr. R.

A SLAVEHOLDER.

In one of his Congressional nal speeches,

TESTIMONY OF THE 'MARYLAND JOURNAL AND BALTIMORE ADVERTISER,' OF MAY 30, 1788. "In the ordinary course of the business of the country, the punishment of relations frequently happens on the same farm, and in view of each other: the father often sees his beloved son-the says: "Avarice alone can drive, as it does drive, son his venerable sire-the mother her much this infernal traffic, and the wretched victims of loved daughter-the daughter her affectionate it, like so many post-horses whipped to death in a parent-the husband sees the wife of his bosom, mail coach. Ambition has its cover-sluts in the and she the husband of her affection, cruelly pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war;

bound up without delicacy or mercy, and without
daring to interpose in each other's behalf, and
punished with all the extremity of incensed rage,
and all the rigor of unrelenting severity. Let us
reverse the case, and suppose it ours: ALL IS SI-
LENT HORROR!"

TESTIMONY OF THE HON. WILLIAM PINCKNEY, OF
MARYLAND.

In a speech before the Maryland House of Delegates, in 1789, Mr. P. calls slavery in that state, "a speaking picture of abominable oppres.

sion;" and adds: "It will not do thus to

act like unrelenting tyrants, perpetually sermonizing it it with liberty as our text, and actual oppression for our commentary. Is she [Maryland] [Maryland not the foster mother of petty despots, the patron of wanton oppression?"

Extract from a speech of Mr. RICE, in the Convention for forming the Constitution of Kentucky, in 1790:

"The master may, and often does, inflict upon

but where are the trophies of avarice? The hand-cuff, the manacle, the blood-stained cowhide!"

MAJOR STODDARD, of the United States' army, who took possession of Louisiana in behalf of the United States, under the cession of 1804, in his Sketches of Louisiana, page 332, says:

*

*

*

"The feelings of humanity are outraged-the most odious tyranny exercised in a land of freedom, and hunger and nakedness prevail amidst plenty. Cruel, and even unusual punishments are daily inflicted on these wretched creatures, enfeebled with hunger, labor and the lash. The scenes of misery and distress constantly witnessed along the coast of the Delta, [of the Mississippi,] the wounds and lacerations occasioned by demoralized masters and over. seers, torture the feelings of the passing stranger, and wring blood from the heart."

Though only the third of the following series of resolutions is directly relevant to the subject now under consideration, we insert the other

resolutions, both because they are explanatory of | The crack of his whip resounds afar, like that of the third, and also serve to reveal the public sen- an angry cartman beating his horses. The blood

timent of Indiana, at the date of the resolutions.

As a large majority of the citizens of Indiana at that time, were natives of slave states, they well

knew the actual condition of the slaves.

1. "RESOLVED UNANIMOUSLY, by the Legislative Council and House of Representatives of Indiana Territory, that a suspension of the sixth article of compact between the United States and the territories and states north west of the river Ohio, passed the 13th day of January, 1783, for the term of ten years, would be highly advantageous to the territory, and meet the ap. probation of at least nine-tenths of the good citizens of the same.

flows, the long wounds cross each other, strips of skin are raised without softening either the hand of the executioner or the heart of the master, who cries 'sting him harder.'

"The reader is moved; so am I: my agitated hand refuses to trace the bloody picture, to re. count how many times the piercing cry of pain has interrupted my silent occupations; how many times I have shuddered at the faces of those barbarous masters, where I saw inscribed the number of victims sacrificed to their ferocity.

"The women are subjected to these punishments as rigorously as the men-not even pregnancy exempts them; in that case, before binding them to the stakes, a hole is made in the ground to accommodate the enlarged form of the victim.

2. "RESOLVED UNANIMOUSLY, that the abstract question of liberty and slavery, is not considered as involved in a suspension of the said article, "It is remarkable that the white creole woinasmuch as the number of slaves in the United men are ordinarily more inexorable than the men. States would not be augmented by the measure.

Their slow and languid gait, and the triffing servi.

3. "RESOLVED UNANIMOUSLY, that the suspen- ces which they impose, betoken only apathetic in

sion of the said article would be equally advanta.
geous to the territory, to the states from whence
the negroes would be brought, and to the negroes
themselves. The states which are overburthened
with negroes, would be benefited by disposing of
the negroes which they cannot comfortably sup-
port;
and THE NEGRO HIMSELF WOULD EX-
CHANGE A SCANTY PITTANCE OF THE COARSEST FOOD,
for a plentiful and nourishing diet; and a situa.
tion which admits not the most distant prospect
of emancipation, for one which presents no con-
siderable obstacle to his wishes.

* *

4. "RESOLVED UNANIMOUSLY, that a copy of these resolutions be delivered to the delegate to Congress from this territory, and that he be, and he hereby is, instructed to use his best endeavors to obtain a suspension of the said article.

J. B. THOMAS,
Speaker of the House of Representatives.
PIERRE MINARD,

President pro tem. of the Legislative Council.
Vincennes, Dec. 20, 1806.

"Forwarded to the Speaker of the United States Senate, by WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON, Governor."-American State Papers, vol. 1, p. 467.

MONSIEUR C. C. ROBIN, who resided in Louisiana from 1802 to 1806, and published a volume containing the results of his observations there, thus speaks of the condition of the slaves:

"While they are at labor, the manager, the master, or the driver has commonly the whip in hand to strike the idle. But those of the negroes who are judged guilty of serious faults, are punished twenty, twenty-five, forty, fifty, or one hundred lashes. The manner of this cruel execution is as follows: four stakes are driven down, making a long square; the culprit is extended naked between these stakes, face downwards; his hands and his feet are bound separately, with strong cords, to each of the stakes, so far apart that his arms and legs, stretched in the form St. Andrew's cross, give the the poor wretch no chance of stirring. Then the executioner, who is ordinarily a negro, armed with the long whip of a coachman, strikes upon the reins and thighs.

dolence; but should the slave not promptly obey, should he even fail to divine the meaning of their gestures, or looks, in an instant they are armed with a formidable whip; it is no longer the arm which cannot sustain the weight of a shawl or a reticule-it is no longer the form which but feebly sustains itself. They themselves order the punishment of one of these poor creatures, and with a dry eye see their victim bound to four stakes; they count the blows, and raise a voice of menace, if the arm that strikes relaxes, or if the blood does not flow in sufficient abundance. Their sensibility changed to fury must needs feed itself for a while on the hideous spectacle; they must, as if to revive themselves, hear the piercing shrieks, and see the flow of fresh blood; there are some of them who, in their frantic rage, pinch and bite their victims.

"It is by no means wonderful that the laws designed to protect the slave, should be little respected by the generality of such masters. I have seen some masters pay those unfortunate people the miserable overcoat which is their due; but others give them nothing at all, and do not even leave them the hours and Sundays granted to them by law. I have seen some of those barbarous masters leave them, during the winter, in a state of revolting nudity, even contrary to their own true interests, for they thus weaken and shorten the lives upon which repose the whole of their own fortunes. I have seen some of those negroes obliged to conceal their nakedness with the long moss of the country. The sad melancholy of these wretches, depicted upon their countenances, the flight of some, and the death of others, do not reclaim their masters; they wreak upon those who remain, the vengeance which they can no longer exercise upon the others."

WHITMAN MEAD, Esq. of New York, in his journal, published nearly a quarter of a century ago, under date of

"SAVANNAH, January 28, 1817.

"To one not accustomed to such scenes as slavery presents, the condition of the slaves is impressively shocking. In the course of my

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1

walks, I was every where witness to their wretch-African is an abused, a monstrously outraged edness. Like the brute creatures of the north, creature." - See Minutes of the American Conven.

they are driven about at the pleasure of all who meet them: half naked and half starved, they drag out a pitiful existence, apparently almost unconscious of what they suffer. A threat accompanies every command, and a bastinado is the usual reward of disobedience."

TESTIMONY OF REV. JOHN RANKIN,

A native of Tennessee, educated there, and for a number of years a preacher in slave states-now pastor of a church in Ripley, Ohio.

"Many poor slaves are stripped naked, stretched and tied across barrels, or large bags, and tortured with the lash during hours, and even whole days, until their flesh is mangled to the very bones. Others are stripped and hung up by the arms, their feet are tied together, and the end of a heavy piece of timber is put between their legs in order to stretch their bodies, and so prepare them for the torturing lash-and in this situation they are often whipped until their bodies are covered with blood and mangled flesh-and in order to add the greatest keenness to their sufferings, their wounds are washed with liquid salt! And some of the miserable creatures are permitted to hang in that position until they actually expire; some die under the lash, others linger about for a time, and at length die of their wounds, and many survive, and endure again similar torture. These bloody scenes are constantly exhibiting in every slaveholding country -thousands of whips are every day stained in African blood! Even the poor females are not

permitted to escape these shocking cruelties."_

Rankin's Letters, pages 57, 58.

These letters were published fifteen years ago. They were addressed to a brother in Virginia, who was a slaveholder.

TESTIMONY OF THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SO-
CIETY.

"We have heard of slavery as it exists in Asia, and Africa, and Turkey-we have heard of the feudal slavery under which the peasantry of Europe have groaned from the days of Alaric until now, but excepting only the horrible system of the West India Islands, we have never heard of slavery in any country, ancient or modern, Pagan, Mohammedan, or Christian! so terrible in its character, as the slavery which exists in these United States." - Seventh Report American Colonization Society, 1824.

TESTIMONY OF THE GRADUAL EMANCIPATION SOCIE

TY OF NORTH CAROLINA.

Signed by Moses Swain, President, and William
Swain, Secretary.

tion, convened in Baltimore, Oct. 25, 1826. FROM NILES' BALTIMORE REGISTER FOR 1829, VOL.

35, р. 4.

"Dealing in slaves has become a large business. Establishments are made at several places in Maryland and Virginia, at which they are sold like cattle. These places of deposit are strongly built, and well supplied with iron thumb-screws and gags, and ornamented with cowskins and other whips-often times bloody."

JUDGE RUFFIN, of the Supreme Court of North Carolina, in one of his judicial decisions, says

"The slave, to remain a slave, must feel that there is NO APPEAL FROM HIS MASTER. No man can anticipate the provocations which the slave would give, nor the consequent wrath of the master, prompting him to BLOODY VEN. GEANCE on the turbulent traitor, a vengeance generally practiced with impunity, by reason of its PRIVACY."-Sce Wheeler's Law of Slavery p. 247.

MR. MOORE, OF VIRGINIA, in his speech before the Legislature of that state, Jan. 15, 1832, says:

"It must be confessed, that although the treatment of our slaves is in the general, as mild and humane as it can be, that it must always happen, that there will be found hundreds of individuals, who, owing either to the natural fe. rocity of their dispositions, or to the effects of intemperance, will be guilty of cruelty and barbarity towards their slaves, which is almost in. tolerable, and at which humanity revolts." TESTIMONY OF B. SWAIN, ESQ., OF NORTH CAROLINA.

"Let any man of spirit and feeling, for a moment cast his thoughts over this land of slaverythink of the nakedness of some, the hungry yearnings of others, the flowing tears and heaving sighs of parting relations, the wailings and wo, the bloody cut of the keen lash, and the frightful scream that rends the very skies and all this to gratify ambition, lust, pride, avarice, vanity, and other depraved feelings of the human heart.... THE WORST IS NOT GENERALLY KNOWN. Were all the miseries, the horrors of slavery, to burst at once into view, a peal of seven-fold thunder could scarce strike greater alarm." See " Swain's Address," 1830.

TESTIMONY OF DR. JAMES C. FINLEY,

Son of Dr. Finley, one of the founders of the Col. onization Society, and brother of R. S. Finley, agent of the American Colonization Society. Dr. J. C. Finley was formerly one of the editors of the Western Medical Journal, at Cincin. nati, and is well known in the west as utterly hostile to immediate abolition.

"In the eastern part of the state, the slaves considerably outnumber the free population. Their situation is there wretched beyond description. Impoverished by the mismanagement which we have already attempted to describe, the master, unable to support his own grandeur and maintain his slaves, puts the unfortunate wretches upon short allowances, scarcely sufficient for their sustenance, so that a great part of them go half naked and half starved much of the time. Generally, throughout the state, the ❘ but I also fear that they will have the effect of

"In almost the last conversation I had with you before I left Cincinnati, I promised to give you some account of some scenes of atrocious cruelty towards slaves, which I witnessed while I lived at the south. I almost regret having made the promise, for not only are they so atrocious that you will with difficulty believe them,