"I have seen them cruelly whipped. I will relate one instance. One Sabbath morning, before I got out of my bed, I heard an outcry, and got up and went to the window, when I saw some six or eight boys, from eight to twelve years of age, near a rack (made for tying horses) on the public square. A man on horseback rode up, got off his horse, took a cord from his pocket, _tied one of the boys_ by the _thumbs_ to the rack, and with his horsewhip lashed him most severely. He then untied him and rode off without saying a word.
"It was a general practice, while I was at Huntsville, Alabama, to have a patrol every night; and, to my knowledge, this patrol was in the habit of traversing the streets with cow-skins, and, if they found any slaves out after eight o"clock without a pa.s.s, to whip them until they were out of reach, or to confine them until morning."
Mr. J.G. BALDWIN, of Middletown, Connecticut, a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, gives the following testimony:--
"I traveled at the south in 1827: when near Charlotte, N.C. a free colored man fell into the road just ahead of me, and went on peaceably.--When pa.s.sing a public-house, the landlord ran out with a large cudgel, and applied it to the head and shoulders of the man with such force as to shatter it in pieces. When the reason of his conduct was asked, he replied, that he owned slaves, and he would not permit free blacks to come into his neighborhood.
"Not long after, I stopped at a public-house near Halifax, N.C., between nine and ten o"clock P.M., to stay over night. A slave sat upon a bench in the bar-room asleep. The master came in, seized a large horsewhip, and, without any warning or apparent provocation, laid it over the face and eyes of the slave. The master cursed, swore, and swung his lash--the slave cowered and trembled, but said not a word. Upon inquiry the next morning, I ascertained that the only offence was falling asleep, and this too in consequence of having been up nearly all the previous night, in attendance upon company."
Rev. JOSEPH M. SADD, of Castile, N.Y., who has lately left Missouri, where he was pastor of a church for some years, says:--
"In one case, near where we lived, a runaway slave, when brought back, was most cruelly beaten--bathed in the _usual_ liquid--laid in the sun, and a physician employed to heal his wounds:--then the same process of punishment and healing was _repeated_, _and repeated again_, and then the poor creature was sold for the New Orleans market. This account we had from the _physician himself_."
MR. ABRAHAM BELL, of Poughkeepsie, New York, a member of the Scotch Presbyterian Church, was employed, in 1837 and 38, in levelling and grading for a rail-road in the state of Georgia: he had under his direction, during the whole time, thirty slaves. Mr. B. gives the following testimony:--
"_All_ the slaves had their backs scarred, from the oft-repeated whippings they had received."
Mr. ALONZO BARNARD, of Farmington, Ohio, who was in Mississippi in 1837 and 8, says:--
"The slaves were often severely whipped. I saw one _woman_ very severely whipped for accidentally cutting up a stalk of cotton.[8]
When they were whipped they were commonly _held down by four men_: if these could not confine them, they were fastened by stakes driven firmly into the ground, and then lashed often so as to draw blood at each blow. I saw one woman who had lately been delivered of a child in consequence of cruel treatment."
[Footnote 8: Mr. Cornelius Johnson, of Farmington, Ohio, was also a witness to this inhuman outrage upon an unprotected woman, for the unintentional destruction of a stalk of cotton! In his testimony he is more particular, and says, that the number of lashes inflicted upon her by the overseer was "ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY."]
Rev. H. LYMAN, late pastor of the Free Presbyterian Church at Buffalo, N.Y. says:--
"There was a steam cotton press, in the vicinity of my boarding-house at New Orleans, which was driven night and day, without intermission.
My curiosity led me to look at the interior of the establishment.
There I saw several slaves engaged in rolling cotton bags, fastening ropes lading carts, &c.
"The presiding genius of the place was a driver, who held a rope four feet long in his hand, which he wielded with cruel dexterity. He used it in single blows, just as the men were lifting to _tighten_ the bale cords. It seemed to me that he was desirous to edify me with a specimen of his authority; at any rate the cruelty was horrible."
Mr. JOHN VANCE, a member of the Baptist Church, in St. Albans, Licking county, Ohio, who moved from Culpepper county, Va., his native state in 1814, testifies as follows:--
"In 1826, I saw a woman by the name of Mallix, flog her female slave with a horse-whip so horribly that she was washed in salt and water several days, to keep her bruises from mortifying.
"In 1811, I was returning from mill, in Shenandoah county, when I heard the cry of murder, in the field of a man named Painter. I rode to the place to see what was going on. Two men, by the names of John Morgan and Michael Siglar, had heard the cry and came running to the place. I saw Painter beating a negro with a tremendous club, or small handspike, swearing he would kill him: but he was rescued by Morgan and Siglar. I learned that Painter had commenced flogging the slave for not getting to work soon enough. He had escaped, and taken refuge under a pile of rails that were on some timbers up a little from the ground. The master had put fire to one end, and stood at the other with his club, to kill him as he came out. The pile was still burning.
Painter said he was a turbulent fellow and he _would_ kill him. The apprehension of P. was TALKED ABOUT, but, as a compromise, the negro was sold to another man."
EXTRACT FROM THE PUBLISHED JOURNAL OF THE LATE WM. SAVER, of Philadelphia, an eminent minister of the Religious Society of Friends:--
"6th mo. 22d, 1791. We pa.s.sed on to Augusta, Georgia. They can scarcely tolerate us, on account of our abhorrence of slavery. On the 28th we got to Savannah, and lodged at one Blount"s, a hard-hearted slaveholder. One of his lads, aged about fourteen, was ordered to go and milk the cow: and falling asleep, through weariness, the master called out and ordered him a flogging. I asked him what he meant by a flogging. He replied, the way we serve them here is, we cut their backs until they are raw all over, and then salt them. Upon this my feelings were roused; I told him that was too bad, and queried *if it were possible; he replied it was, with many curses upon the blacks. At supper this unfeeling wretch _craved a blessing_!
"Next morning I heard some one begging for mercy, and also the lash as of a whip. Not knowing whence the sound came, I rose, and presently found the poor boy tied up to a post, his toes scarcely touching the ground, and a negro whipper. He had already cut him in an unmerciful manner, and the blood ran to his heels. I stepped in between them, and ordered him untied immediately, which, with some reluctance and astonishment, was done. Returning to the house I saw the landlord, who then showed himself in his true colors, the most abominably wicked man I ever met with, full of horrid execrations and threatenings upon all northern people; but I did not spare him; which occasioned a bystander to say, with an oath, that I should be "popped over." We left them, and were in full expectation of their way-laying or coming after us, but the Lord restrained them. The next house we stopped at we found the same wicked spirit."
Col. ELIJAH ELLSWORTH, of Richfield, Ohio, gives the following testimony:--
"Eight or ten years ago I was in Putnam county, in the state of Georgia, at a Mr. Slaughter"s, the father of my brother"s wife. A negro, that belonged to Mr. Walker, (I believe,) was accused of stealing a pedlar"s trunk. The negro denied, but, without ceremony, was lashed to a tree--the whipping commenced--six or eight men took turns--the poor fellow begged for mercy, but without effect, until he was literally _cut to pieces, from his shoulders to his hips_, and covered with a gore of blood. When he said the trunk was in a stack of fodder, he was unlashed. They proceeded to the stack, but found no trunk. They asked the poor fellow, what he lied about it for; he said, "Lord, Ma.s.sa, to keep from being whipped to death; I know nothing about the trunk." They commenced the whipping with redoubled vigor, until I really supposed he would be whipped to death on the spot; and such shrieks and crying for mercy! Again he acknowledged, and again they were defeated in finding, and the same reason given as before.
Some were for whipping again, others thought he would not survive another, and they ceased. About two months after, the trunk was found, and it was then ascertained who the thief was: and the poor fellow, after being nearly beat to death, and twice made to lie about it, was as innocent as I was."
The following statements are furnished by Major HORACE NYE, of Putnam, Muskingum county, Ohio.
"In the summer of 1837, Mr. JOHN H. MOOREHEAD, a partner of mine, descended the Mississippi with several boat loads of flour. He told me that floating in a place in the Mississippi, where he could see for miles a head, he perceived a concourse of people on the bank, that for at least a mile and a half above he saw them, and heard the screams of some person, and from a great distance, the crack of a whip, he run near the sh.o.r.e, and saw them whipping a black man, who was on the ground, and at that time nearly unable to scream, but the whip continued to be applied without intermission, as long as he was in sight, say from one mile and a half, to two miles below--he probably saw and heard them for one hour in all. He expressed the opinion that the man could not survive.
"About four weeks since I had a conversation with Mr. Porter, a respectable citizen of Morgan county of this state, of about fifty years of age. He told me that he formerly traveled about five years in the southern states, and that on one occasion he stopped at a private house, to stay all night; (I think it was in Virginia,) while he was conversing with the man, his wife came in, and complained that the wench had broken some article in the kitchen, and that she must be whipped. He took the _woman_ into the door yard, stripped her clothes down to her hips--tied her hands together, and drawing them up to a limb, so that she could just touch the ground, took a very large cowskin whip, and commenced flogging; he said that every stroke at first raised the skin, and immediately the blood came through; this he continued, until the blood stood in a puddle down at her feet. He then turned to my informant and said, "Well, Yankee, what do you think of that?""
EXTRACT OF A LETTER FROM MR. W. DUSTIN, a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and, when the letter was written, 1835, a student of Marietta College, Ohio.
"I find by looking over my journal that the murdering, which I spoke of yesterday, took place about the first of June, 1834.
"Without commenting upon this act of cruelty, or giving vent to my own feelings, I will simply give you a statement of the fact, as known from _personal_ observation.
"Dr. K. a man of wealth, and a practising physician in the county of Yazoo, state of Mississippi, personally known to me, having lived in the same neighborhood more than twelve months, after having scourged one of his negroes for running away, declared with an oath, that if he ran away again, he would kill him. The negro, so soon as an opportunity offered, ran away again. He was caught and brought back.
Again he was scourged, until his flesh, mangled and torn, and thick mingled with the clotted blood, rolled from his back. He became apparently insensible, and beneath the heaviest stroke would scarcely utter a groan. The master got tired, laid down his whip and nailed the negro"s ear to a tree; in this condition, nailed fast to the rugged wood, he remained all night!
"Suffice it to say, in the conclusion, that the next day he was found DEAD!
"Well, what did they do with the master? The sum total of it is this: he was taken before a magistrate and gave bonds, for his appearance at the next court. Well, to be sure he had plenty of cash, so he paid up his bonds and moved away, and there the matter ended.
"If the above fact will be of any service to you in exhibiting to the world the condition of the unfortunate negroes, you are at liberty to make use of it in any way you think best.
Yours, fraternally, M. DUSTIN."
Mr. ALFRED WILKINSON, a member of the Baptist Church in Skeneateles, N.Y. and the a.s.sessor of that town, has furnished the following:
"I went down the Mississippi in December, 1838 and saw twelve of fourteen negroes punished on one plantation, by stretching them on a ladder and tying them to it; then stripping off their clothes, and whipping them on the naked flesh with a heavy whip, the lash seven or eight feet long: most of the strokes cut the skin. I understood they were whipped for not doing the tasks allotted to them."
FROM THE PHILANTHROPIST, Cincinnati, Ohio, Feb. 26, 1839.
"A very intelligent lady the widow of a highly respectable preacher of the gospel of the Presbyterian Church, formerly a resident of a free state, and a colonizationist, and a strong antiabolitionist, who, although an enemy to slavery, was opposed to abolition on the ground that it was for carrying things too rapidly, and without regard to circ.u.mstances, and especially who believed that abolitionists exaggerated with regard to the evils of slavery, and used to say that such men ought to go to slave states and see for themselves, to be convinced that they did the slaveholders injustice, has gone and seen for herself. Hear her testimony."
_Kentucky, Dec._ 25, 1835.
"Dear Mrs. W.--I am still in the land of oppression and cruelty, but hope soon to breathe the air of a free state. My soul is sick of slavery, and I rejoice that my time is nearly expired: but the scenes that I have witnessed have made an impression that never can be effaced, and have inspired me with the determination to unite my feeble efforts with those who are laboring to suppress this horrid system. I am _now_ an _abolitionist_. You will cease to be surprised at this, when I inform you, that I have just seen a poor slave who was beaten by his inhuman master until he could neither walk nor stand. I saw him from my window carried from the barn where he had been whipped to the cabin, by two negro men; and he now lies there, and if he recovers, will be a sufferer for months, and probably for life. You will doubtless suppose that he committed some great crime; but it was not so. He was called upon by a young man (the son of his master,) to do something, and not moving as quickly as his young master wished him to do, he drove him to the barn, knocked him down, and jumped upon him, stamped, and then cowhided him until he was almost dead. This is not the first act of cruelty that I have seen, though it is the _worst_; and I am convinced that those who have described the cruelties of slaveholders, have not exaggerated."