I think it important to premise, that I have seen almost nothing of slavery on _plantations_. My testimony will have respect exclusively to the treatment of "_house-servants_," and chiefly those belonging to the first families in the city of Charleston, both in the religious and in the fashionable world. And here let me say, that the treatment of _plantation_ slaves cannot be fully known, except by the poor sufferers themselves, and their drivers and overseers. In a mult.i.tude of instances, even the master can know very little of the actual condition of his own field-slaves, and his wife and daughters far less. A few facts concerning my own family will show this. Our permanent residence was in Charleston; our country-seat (Bellemont,) was 200 miles distant, in the north-western part of the state; where, for some years, our family spent a few months annually. Our _plantation_ was three miles from this family mansion. There, all the field-slaves lived and worked. Occasionally, once a month, perhaps, some of the family would ride over to the plantation, but I never visited the _fields where the slaves were at work_, and knew almost nothing of their condition; but this I do know, that the overseers who had charge of them, were generally unprincipled and intemperate men.
But I rejoice to know, that the general treatment of slaves in that region of country, was far milder than on the plantations in the lower country.
Throughout all the eastern and middle portions of the state, the planters very rarely reside permanently on their plantations. They have almost invariably _two residences_, and spend less than half the year on their estates. Even while spending a few months on them, politics, field-sports, races, speculations, journeys, visits, company, literary pursuits, &c., absorb so much of their time, that they must, to a considerable extent, take the condition of their slaves _on trust_, from the reports of their overseers. I make this statement, because these slaveholders (the wealthier cla.s.s,) are, I believe, almost the only ones who visit the north with their families;--and northern opinions of slavery are based chiefly on their testimony.
But not to dwell on preliminaries, I wish to record my testimony to the faithfulness and accuracy with which my beloved sister, Sarah M.
Grimke, has, in her "narrative and testimony," on a preceding page, described the condition of the slaves, and the effect upon the hearts of slaveholders, (even the best,) caused by the exercise of unlimited power over moral agents. Of the _particular acts_ which she has stated, I have no personal knowledge, as they occurred before my remembrance; but of the spirit that prompted them, and that constantly displays itself in scenes of similar horror, the recollections of my childhood, and the effaceless imprint upon my riper years, with the breaking of my heart-strings, when, finding that I was powerless to shield the victims, I tore myself from my home and friends, and became an exile among strangers--all these throng around me as witnesses, and their testimony is graven on my memory with a pen of fire.
Why I did not become totally hardened, under the daily operation of this system, G.o.d only knows; in deep solemnity and grat.i.tude, I say, it was the _Lord"s_ doing, and marvellous in mine eyes. Even before my heart was touched with the love of Christ, I used to say, "Oh that I had the wings of a dove, that I might flee away and be at rest;" for I felt that there could be no rest for me in the midst of such outrages and pollutions. And yet I saw _nothing_ of slavery in its most vulgar and repulsive forms. I saw it in the city, among the fashionable and the honorable, where it was garnished by refinement, and decked out for show. A few _facts_ will unfold the state of society in the circle with which I was familiar far better than any general a.s.sertions I can make.
I will first introduce the reader to a woman of the highest respectability--one who was foremost in every benevolent enterprise, and stood for many years, I may say, at the _head_ of the fashionable Elite of the city of Charleston, and afterwards at the head of the moral and religious female society there. It was after she had made a profession of religion, and retired from the fashionable world, that I knew her; therefore I will present her in her religious character.
This lady used to keep cowhides, or small paddles, (called "pancake sticks,") in four different apartments in her house; so that when she wished to punish, or to have punished, any of her slaves, she might not have the trouble of sending for an instrument of torture. For many years, one or other, and _often_ more of her slaves, were flogged _every day_; particularly the young slaves about the house, whose faces were slapped, or their hands beat with the "pancake stick; for every trifling offence--and often for no fault at all. But the floggings were not all; the scolding, and abuse daily heaped upon them all, were worse: "fools" and "liars," "s.l.u.ts" and "husseys,"
"hypocrites" and "good-for-nothing creatures"; were the common epithets with which her mouth was filled, when addressing her slaves, adults as well as children. Very often she would take a position at her window, in an upper story, and scold at her slaves while working in the garden, at some distance from the house, (a large yard intervening,) and occasionally order a flogging. I have known her thus on the watch, scolding for more than an hour at a time, in so loud a voice that the whole neighborhood could hear her; and this without the least apparent feeling of shame. Indeed, it was no disgrace among slaveholders, and did not in the least injure her standing, either as a lady or a Christian, in the aristocratic circle in which she moved.
After the "revival" in Charleston, in 1825, she opened her house to social prayer-meetings. The room in which they were held in the evening, and where the voice of prayer was heard around the family altar, and where she herself retired for private devotion thrice each day, was the very place in which, when her slaves were to be whipped with the cowhide, they were taken to receive the infliction; and the wail of the sufferer would be heard, where, perhaps only a few hours previous, rose the voices of prayer and praise. This mistress would occasionally send her slaves, male and female, to the Charleston work-house to be punished. One poor girl, whom she sent there to be flogged, and who was accordingly stripped _naked_ and whipped, showed me the deep gashes on her back--I might have laid my whole finger in them--_large pieces of flesh had actually been cut out by the torturing lash_. She sent another female slave there, to be imprisoned and worked on the tread-mill. This girl was confined several days, and forced to work the mill while in a state of suffering from another cause. For ten days or two weeks after her return, she was lame, from the violent exertion necessary to enable her to keep the step on the machine. She spoke to me with intense feeling of this outrage upon her, as a _woman_. Her men servants were sometimes flogged there; and so exceedingly offensive has been the putrid flesh of their lacerated backs, for days after the infliction, that they would be kept out of the house--the smell arising from their wounds being too horrible to be endured. They were always stiff and sore for some days, and not in a condition to be seen by visitors.
This professedly Christian woman was a most awful ill.u.s.tration of the ruinous influence of arbitrary power upon the temper--her bursts of pa.s.sion upon the heads of her victims were dreaded even by her own children, and very often, all the pleasure of social intercourse around the domestic board, was destroyed by her ordering the cook into her presence, and storming at him, when the dinner or breakfast was not prepared to her taste, and in the presence of all her children, commanding the waiter to slap his face. _Fault-finding_, was with her the constant accompaniment of every meal, and banished that peace which should hover around the social board, and smile on every face.
It was common for her to order brothers to whip their own sisters, and sisters their own brothers, and yet no woman visited among the poor more than she did, or gave more liberally to relieve their wants.
This may seem perfectly unaccountable to a northerner, but these seeming contradictions vanish when we consider that over _them_ she possessed no arbitrary power, they were always presented to her mind as unfortunate sufferers, towards whom her sympathies most freely flowed; she was ever ready to wipe the tears from _their_ eyes, and open wide her purse for _their_ relief, but the others were her _va.s.sals_, thrust down by public opinion beneath her feet, to be at her beck and call, ever ready to serve in all humility, her, whom G.o.d in his providence had set over them--it was their _duty_ to abide in abject submission, and hers to _compel_ them to do so--_it was thus that she reasoned_. Except at family prayers, none were permitted to _sit_ in her presence, but the seamstresses and waiting maids, and they, however delicate might be their circ.u.mstances, were forced to sit upon low stools, without backs, that they might be constantly reminded of their inferiority. A slave who waited in the house, was guilty on a particular occasion of going to visit his wife, and kept dinner waiting a little, (his wife was the slave of a lady who lived at a little distance.) When the family sat down to the table, the mistress began to scold the waiter for the offence--he attempted to excuse himself--she ordered him to hold his tongue--he ventured another apology; her son then rose from the table in a rage, and beat the face and ears of the waiter so dreadfully that the blood gushed from his mouth, and nose, and ears. This mistress was a _professor of religion_; her daughter who related the circ.u.mstance, was a _fellow member_ of the Presbyterian church _with the poor outraged slave_--instead of feeling indignation at this outrageous abuse of her brother in the church, she justified the deed, and said "he got just what he deserved." I solemnly believe this to be a true picture of _slaveholding religion_.
The following is another ill.u.s.tration of it:
A mistress in Charleston sent a grey headed female slave to the workhouse, and had her severely flogged. The poor old woman went to an acquaintance of mine and begged her to buy her, and told her how cruelly she had been whipped. My friend examined her _lacerated back_, and out of compa.s.sion did purchase her. The circ.u.mstance was mentioned to one of the former owner"s relatives, who asked her if it were true. The mistress told her it was, and said that she had made the severe whipping of this aged woman a _subject of prayer_, and that she believed she had done right to have it inflicted upon her. The last "owner" of the poor old slave, said she, had no fault to find with her as a servant.
I remember very well that when I was a child, our next door neighbor whipped a young woman so brutally, that in order to escape his blows she rushed through the drawing-room window in the second story, and fell upon the street pavement below and broke her hip. This circ.u.mstance produced no excitement or inquiry.
The following circ.u.mstance occurred in Charleston, in 1828:
A slaveholder, after flogging a little girl about thirteen years old, set her on a table with her feet fastened in a pair of stocks. He then locked the door and took out the key. When the door was opened she was found dead, having fallen from the table. When I asked a prominent lawyer, who belonged to one of the first families in the State, whether the murderer of this helpless child could not be indicted, he coolly replied, that the slave was Mr. ----"s property, and if he chose to suffer the _loss_, no one else had any thing to do with it. The loss of _human life_, the distress of the parents and other relatives of the little girl, seemed utterly out of his thoughts: it was the loss of _property_ only that presented itself to his mind.
I knew a gentleman of great benevolence and generosity of character, so essentially to injure the eye of a little boy, about ten years old, as to destroy its sight, by the blow of a cowhide, inflicted whilst he was whipping him.[7] I have heard the same individual speak of "breaking down the spirit of a slave under the lash" as perfectly right.
[Footnote 7: The Jewish law would have set this servant free, for his eye"s sake, but he was held in slavery and sold from hand to hand, although, besides this t.i.tle to his liberty according to Jewish law, he was a _mulatto_, and therefore free under the Const.i.tution of the United States, in whose preamble our fathers declare that they established it expressly to "secure the blessings of _liberty_ to themselves and _their posterity_."--Ed.]
I also know that an aged slave of his, (by marriage,) was allowed to get a scanty and precarious subsistence, by begging in the streets of Charleston--he was too old to work, and therefore _his allowance was stopped_, and he was turned out to make his living by begging.
When I was about thirteen years old, I attended a seminary, in Charleston, which was superintended by a man and his wife of superior education. They had under their instruction the daughters of nearly all the aristocracy. Their cruelty to their slaves, both male and female, I can never forget. I remember one day there was called into the school room to open a window, a boy whose head had been shaved in order to disgrace him, and he had been so dreadfully whipped that he could hardly walk. So horrible was the impression produced upon my mind by his heart-broken countenance and crippled person that I fainted away. The sad and ghastly countenance of one of their female mulatto slaves who used to sit on a low stool at her sewing in the piazza, is now fresh before me. She often told me, secretly, how cruelly she was whipped when they sent her to the work house. I had known so much of the terrible scourgings inflicted in that house of blood, that when I was once obliged to pa.s.s it, the very sight smote me with such horror that my limbs could hardly sustain me. I felt as if I was pa.s.sing the precincts of h.e.l.l. A friend of mine who lived in the neighborhood, told me she often heard the screams of the slaves under their torture.
I once heard a physician of a high family, and of great respectability in his profession, say, that when he sent his slaves to the work-house to be flogged, he always went to see it done, that he might be sure they were properly, i.e. _severely_ whipped. He also related the following circ.u.mstance in my presence. He had sent a youth of about eighteen to this horrible place to be whipped and _afterwards_ to be worked upon the treadmill. From not keeping the step, which probably he COULD NOT do, in consequence of the lacerated state of his body; his arm got terribly torn, from the shoulder to the wrist. This physician said, he went every day to attend to it himself, in order that he might use those restoratives, which _would inflict the greatest possible pain_. This poor boy, after being imprisoned there for some weeks, was then brought home, and compelled to wear iron clogs on his ankles for one or two months. I saw him with those irons on one day when I was at the house. This man was, when young, remarkable in the fashionable world for his elegant and fascinating manners, but the exercise of the slaveholder"s power has thrown the fierce air of tyranny even over these.
I heard another man of equally high standing say, that he believed he suffered far more than his waiter did whenever he flogged him for he felt the _exertion_ for days afterward, but he could not let his servant go on in the neglect of his business, it was _his duty_ to chastise him. "His duty" to flog this boy of seventeen so severely that he felt _the exertion_ for days after! and yet he never felt it to be his duty to instruct him, or have him instructed, even in the common principles of morality. I heard the mother of this man say it would be no surprise to her, if he killed a slave some day, for, that, when transported with pa.s.sion he did not seem to care what he did. He once broke a _large_ stick over the back of a slave and at another time the ivory b.u.t.t-end of a long coach whip over the _head_ of another. This last was attacked with epileptic fits some months after, and has ever since been subject to them, and occasionally to violent fits of insanity.
Southern mistresses sometimes flog their slaves themselves though generally one slave is compelled to flog another. Whilst staying at a friend"s house some years ago, I one day saw the mistress with a cow-hide in her hand, and heard her scolding in an under tone, her waiting man, who was about twenty-five years old. Whether she actually inflicted the blows I do not know, for I hastened out of sight and hearing. It was not the first time I had seen a mistress thus engaged.
I knew she was a cruel mistress, and had heard her daughters disputing, whether their mother did right or wrong, to send the slave _children_, (whom she sent out to sweep chimneys) to the work house to be whipped if they did not bring in their wages regularly. This woman moved in the most fashionable circle in Charleston. The income of this family was derived mostly from the hire of their slaves, about one hundred in number. Their luxuries were blood-bought luxuries indeed.
And yet what stranger would ever have inferred their cruelties from the courteous reception and bland manners of the parlor. Every thing cruel and revolting is carefully concealed from strangers, especially those from the north. Take an instance. I have known the master and mistress of a family send to their friends to _borrow_ servants to wait on company, because their own slaves had been so cruelly flogged in the work house, that they could not walk without limping at every step, and their putrified flesh emitted such an intolerable smell that they were not fit to be in the presence of company. How can northerners know these things when they are hospitably received at southern tables and firesides? I repeat it, no one who has not been an _integral part_ of a slaveholding community, can have any idea of its abominations. It is a whited sepulchre full of dead men"s bones and all uncleanness. Blessed be G.o.d, the Angel of _Truth_ has descended and rolled away the stone from the mouth of the sepulchre, and sits upon it. The abominations so long hidden are now brought forth before all Israel and the sun. Yes, the Angel of Truth _sits upon this stone_, and it can never be rolled back again.
The utter disregard of the comfort of the slaves, in _little_ things, can scarcely be conceived by those who have not been a _component part_ of slaveholding communities. Take a few particulars out of hundreds that might be named. In South Carolina musketoes swarm in myriads, more than half the year--they are so excessively annoying at night, that no family thinks of sleeping without nets or "musketoe-bars" hung over their bedsteads, yet slaves are never provided with them, unless it be the favorite old domestics who get the cast-off pavilions; and yet these very masters and mistresses will be so kind to their _horses_ as to provide them with _fly nets_.
Bedsteads and bedding too, are rarely provided for any of the slaves--if the waiters and coachmen, waiting maids, cooks, washers, &c., have beds at all, they must generally get them for themselves.
Commonly they lie down at night on the bare floor, with a small blanket wrapped round them in winter, and in summer a coa.r.s.e osnaburg sheet, or nothing. Old slaves generally have beds, but it is because when younger _they have provided them for themselves._
Only two meals a day are allowed the house slaves--the _first at twelve o"clock_. If they eat before this time, it is by stealth, and I am sure there must be a good deal of suffering among them from _hunger_, and particularly by children. Besides this, they are often kept from their meals by way of punishment. No table is provided for them to eat from. They know nothing of the comfort and pleasure of gathering round the social board--each takes his plate or tin pan and iron spoon and holds it in the hand or on the lap. I _never_ saw slaves seated round a _table_ to partake of any meal.
As the general rule, no lights of any kind, no firewood--no towels, basins, or soap, no tables, chairs, or other furniture, are provided.
Wood for cooking and washing _for the family_ is found, but when the master"s work is done, the slave must find wood for himself if he has a fire. I have repeatedly known slave children kept the whole winter"s evening, sitting on the stair-case in a cold entry, just to be at hand to snuff candles or hand a tumbler of water from the side-board, or go on errands from one room to another. It may be asked why they were not permitted to stay in the parlor, when they would be still more at hand. I answer, because waiters are not allowed to _sit_ in the presence of their owners, and as children who were kept running all day, would of course get very tired of standing for two or three hours, they were allowed to go into the entry and sit on the staircase until rung for. Another reason is, that even slaveholders at times find the presence of slaves very annoying; they cannot exercise entire freedom of speech before them on all subjects.
I have also known instances where seamstresses were kept in cold entries to work by the stair case lamps for one or two hours, every evening in winter--they could not see without standing up all the time, though the work was often too large and heavy for them to sew upon it in that position without great inconvenience, and yet they were expected to do their work as _well_ with their cold fingers, and standing up, as if they had been sitting by a comfortable fire and provided with the necessary light. House slaves suffer a great deal also from not being allowed to leave the house without permission. If they wish to go even for a draught of water, they must _ask leave_, and if they stay longer than the mistress thinks necessary, they are liable to be punished, and often are scolded or slapped, or kept from going down to the next meal.
It frequently happens that relatives, among slaves, are separated for weeks or months, by the husband or brother being taken by the master on a journey, to attend on his horses and himself.--When they return, the white husband seeks the wife of his love; but the black husband must wait to see _his_ wife, until mistress pleases to let her chambermaid leave her room. Yes, such is the despotism of slavery, that wives and sisters dare not run to meet their husbands and brothers after such separations, and hours sometimes elapse before they are allowed to meet; and, at times, a fiendish pleasure is taken in keeping them asunder--this furnishes an opportunity to vent feelings of spite for any little neglect of "duty."
The sufferings to which slaves are subjected by separations of various kinds, cannot be imagined by those unacquainted with the working out of the system behind the curtain. Take the following instances.
Chambermaids and seamstresses often sleep in their mistresses"
apartments, but with no bedding at all. I know an instance of a woman who has been married eleven years, and yet has never been allowed to sleep out of her mistress"s chamber.--This is a _great_ hardship to slaves. When we consider that house slaves are rarely allowed social intercourse during _the day_, as their work generally _separates_ them; the barbarity of such an arrangement is obvious. It is peculiarly a hardship in the above case, as the husband of the woman does not "belong" to her "owner;" and because he is subject to dreadful attacks of illness, and can have but little attention from his wife in the _day_. And yet her mistress, who is an old lady, gives her the highest character as a faithful servant, and told a friend of mine, that she was "entirely dependent upon her for _all_ her comforts; she dressed and undressed her, gave her all her food, and was so _necessary_ to her that she could not do without her." I may add, that this couple are tenderly attached to each other.
I also know an instance in which the husband was a slave and the wife was free: during the illness of the former, the latter was _allowed_ to come and nurse him; she was obliged to leave the work by which she had made a living, and come to stay with her husband, and thus lost weeks of her time, or he would have suffered for want of proper attention; and yet his "owner" made her no compensation for her services. He had long been a faithful and a favorite slave, and his owner was a woman very benevolent to the poor whites.--She went a great deal among these, as a visiting commissioner of the Ladies"
Benevolent Society, and was in the constant habit of _paying the relatives of the poor whites_ for nursing _their_ husbands, fathers, and other relations; because she thought it very hard, when their time was taken up, so that they could not earn their daily bread, that they should be left to suffer. Now, such is the stupifying influence of the "_chattel_ principle" on the minds of slaveholders, that I do not suppose it ever occurred to her that this poor _colored_ wife ought to be paid for her services, and particularly as she was spending her time and strength in taking care of her "_property_." She no doubt only thought how kind she was, to _allow_ her to come and stay so long in her yard; for, let it be kept in mind, that slaveholders have unlimited power to separate husbands and wives, parents and children, however and whenever they please; and if this mistress had chosen to do it, she could have debarred this woman from all intercourse with her husband, by forbidding her to enter her premises.
Persons who own plantations and yet live in cities, often take children from their parents as soon as they are weaned, and send them into the country; because they do not want the time of the mother taken up by attendance upon her own children, it being too valuable to the mistress. As a _favor_, she is, in some cases, permitted to go to see them once a year. So, on the other hand, if field slaves happen to have children of an age suitable to the convenience of the master, they are taken from their parents and brought to the city. Parents are almost never consulted as to the disposition to be made of their children; they have as little control over them, as have domestic animals over the disposal of their young. Every natural 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 mult.i.tude 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.
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 of returning to their families often, on the part of the husband, is entirely destroyed by the complaints preferred against the slaves when he comes home to his meals.
A mistress of my acquaintance asked her servant 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. 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 sympathies 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 _minutiae_ of slavery, because this is a part of the subject often overlooked, and cannot be appreciated by any but those who have been witnesses, and entered into sympathy with the slaves as human beings.
Slaveholders think nothing of them, because they regard their slaves as _property_, the mere instruments of their convenience and pleasure.
_One who is a slaveholder 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.
ANGELINA G. WELD.
GENERAL TESTIMONY
TO THE CRUELTIES INFLICTED UPON SLAVES.
Before presenting to the reader particular details of the cruelties inflicted upon American slaves, we will present in brief the well-weighed declarations of slaveholders and other residents 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.
TESTIMONY OF REV. GEORGE WHITEFIELD.