The Editor, in speaking of the sufferings of the slaves which are
taken by the internal trade to the South West, says:
"Place yourself in imagination, for a moment, in their condition.
With _heavy galling chains_, riveted upon your person; _half-naked,
half-starved_; your back _lacerated_ with the 'knotted Whip;'
traveling to a region where your _condition through time will be
second only to the wretched creatures in Hell_.
"This depicting is not visionary. Would to God that it was."
TESTIMONY OF THE PRESBYTERIAN SYNOD OF KENTUCKY; _A large majority of
whom are slaveholders._
"This system licenses and produces _great cruelty_.
"Mangling, imprisonment, starvation, every species of torture, may be
inflicted upon him, (the slave,) and he has no redress.
"There are now in our whole land two millions of human beings,
exposed, defenceless, to every insult, and every injury short of
maiming or death, which their fellow men may choose to inflict. _They
suffer all_ that can be inflicted by wanton caprice, by grasping
avarice, by brutal lust, by malignant spite, and by insane anger.
Their happiness is the sport of every whim, and the prey of every
passion that may, occasionally, or habitually, infest the master's
bosom. If we could calculate the amount of wo endured by ill-treated
slaves, it would overwhelm every compassionate heart--it would move
even the obdurate to sympathy. There is also a vast sum of suffering
inflicted upon the slave by humane masters, as a punishment for that
idleness and misconduct which slavery naturally produces.
"_Brutal stripes_ and all the varied kinds of personal indignities,
are not the only species of cruelty which slavery licenses."
TESTIMONY OF THE REV. N.H. HARDING, Pastor of the Presbyterian Church,
in Oxford, North Carolina, a slaveholder.
"I am greatly surprised that you should in any form have been the
apologist of a system so full of deadly poison to all holiness and
benevolence as slavery, the concocted essence of fraud, selfishness,
and cold hearted tyranny, and the fruitful parent of unnumbered evils,
both to the oppressor and the oppressed, THE ONE THOUSANDTH PART OF
WHICH HAS NEVER BEEN BROUGHT TO LIGHT."
MR. ASA A. STONE, a theological student, who lived near Natchez,
(Mi.,) in 1834 and 5, sent the following with other testimony, to be
published under his own name, in the N.Y. Evangelist, while he was
still residing there.
"Floggings for all offences, including deficiencies in work, are
_frightfully common_, and _most terribly severe._
"_Rubbing with salt and red pepper is very common after a severe
whipping._"
TESTIMONY OF REV. PHINEAS SMITH, Centreville, Allegany Co., N.Y. who
lived four years at the South.
"They are badly clothed, badly fed, wretchedly lodged, unmercifully
whipped, from month to month, from year to year, from childhood to old
age."
REV. JOSEPH M. SADD, Castile, Genessee CO. N.Y. who was till recently
a preacher in Missouri, says,
"It is true that barbarous cruelties are inflicted upon them, such as
terrible lacerations with the whip, and excruciating tortures are
sometimes experienced from the thumb screw."