JACOB DUNHAM.
Master of the brig Cyrus, of N.Y."
Rev. SYLVESTER COWLES, pastor of the Presbyterian church in Fredonia,
N.Y. says:--
"A young man, a member of the church in Conewango, went to Alabama
last year, to reside as a clerk in an uncle's store. When he had been
there about nine months, he wrote his father that he must return home.
To see members of the same church sit at the communion table of our
Lord one day, and the next to see one seize any weapon and knock the
other down, _as he had seen_, he _could not_ live there. His good
father forthwith gave him permission to return home."
The following is a specimen of the shameless hardihood with which a
professed minister of the Gospel, and editor of a religious paper,
assumes the right to hold God's image as a chattel. It is from the
Southern Christian Herald:--
"It is stated in the Georgetown Union, that a negro, supposed to have
died of cholera, when that disease prevailed in Charleston, was
carried to the public burying ground to be interred; but before
interment signs of life appeared, and, by the use of proper means, he
was restored to health. And now the man who first perceived the signs
of life in the slave, and that led to his preservation, claims the
property as his own, and is about bringing suit for its recovery. As
well might a man who rescued his neighbor's slave, or his _horse_,
from drowning, or who extinguished the flames that would otherwise
soon have burnt down his neighbor's house, claim the _property_ as his
own."
Rev. GEORGE BOURNE, of New York city, late Editor of the "Protestant
Vindicator," who was a preacher seven years in Virginia, gives the
following testimony.[39]
"Benjamin Lewis, who was an elder in the Presbyterian church, engaged
a carpenter to repair and enlarge his house. After some time had
elapsed, Kyle, the builder, was awakened very early in the morning by
a most piteous moaning and shrieking. He arose, and following the
sound, discovered a colored woman nearly naked, tied to a fence, while
Lewis was lacerating her. Kyle instantly commanded the slave driver to
desist. Lewis maintained his jurisdiction over his slaves, and
threatened Kyle that he would punish him for his interference.
Finally Kyle obtained the release of the victim.
"A second and a third scene of the same kind occurred, and on the
third occasion the altercation almost produced a battle between the
elder and the carpenter.
"Kyle immediately arranged his affairs, packed up his tools and
prepared to depart. 'Where are you going?' demanded Lewis. 'I am
going home;' said Kyle. 'Then I will pay you nothing for what you
have done,' retorted the slave driver, 'unless you complete your
contract.' The carpenter went away with this edifying declaration, 'I
will not stay here a day longer; for I expect the fire of God will
come down and burn you up altogether, and I do not choose to go to
hell with you.' Through hush-money and promises not to whip the women
any more, I believe Kyle returned and completed his engagement.
"James Kyle of Harrisonburg, Virginia, frequently narrated that
circumstance, and his son, the carpenter, confirmed it with all the
minute particulars combined with his temporary residence on the
Shenandoah river.
"John M'Cue of Augusta county, Virginia, a _Presbyterian preacher_,
frequently on the Lord's day morning, tied up his slaves and whipped
them; and left them bound, while he went to the meeting house and
preached--and after his return home repeated his scourging. That
fact, with others more heinous, was known to all persons in his
congregation and around the vicinity; and so far from being censured
for it, he and his brethren justified it as essential to preserve
their 'domestic institutions.'
"Mrs. Pence, of Rockingham county, Virginia, used to boast,--'I am the
best hand to whip a _wench_ in the whole county.' She used to pinion
the girls to a post in the yard on the Lord's day morning, scourge
them, put on the '_negro plaster_,' salt, pepper, and vinegar, leave
them tied, and walk away to church as demure as a nun, and after
service repeat her flaying, if she felt the whim. I once expostulated
with her upon her cruelly. 'Mrs. Pence, how can you whip your girls
so publicly and disturb your neighbors so on the Lord's day morning.'
Her answer was memorable. 'If I were to whip them on any other day I
should lose a day's work; but by whipping them on Sunday, their backs
get well enough by Monday morning.' That woman, if alive, is
doubtless a member of the church now, as then.
"Rev. Dr. Staughton, formerly of Philadelphia, often stated, that when
he lived at Georgetown, S.C. he could tell the doings of one of the
slaveholders of the Baptist church there by his prayers at the prayer
meeting. 'If,' said he, 'that man was upon good terms with his
slaves, his words were cold and heartless as frost; if he had been
whipping a man, he would pray with life; but if he had left a woman
whom he had been flogging, tied to a post in his cellar, with a
determination to go back and torture her again, O! how he would pray!'
The Rev. Cyrus P. Grosvenor of Massachusetts can confirm the above
statement by Dr. Staughton.
"William Wilson, a Presbyterian preacher of Augusta county, Virginia,
had a young colored girl who was constitutionally unhealthy. As no
means to amend her were availing, he sold her to a member of his
congregation, and in the usual style of human flesh dealers, warranted
her 'sound,' &c. The fraud was instantly discovered; but he would not
refund the amount. A suit was commenced, and was long continued, and
finally the plaintiff recovered the money out of which he had been
swindled by slave-trading with his own preacher. No Presbytery
censured him, although Judge Brown, the chancellor, severely condemned
the imposition.
"In the year 1811, Johab Graham, a preacher, lived with Alexander
Nelson a Presbyterian elder, near Stanton, Virginia, and he informed
me that a man had appeared before Nelson, who was a magistrate, and
swore falsely against his slave,--that the elder ordered him
thirty-nine lashes. All that wickedness was done as an excuse for his
dissipated owner to obtain money. A negro trader had offered him a
considerable sum for the 'boy,' and under the pretence of saving him
from the punishment of the law, he was trafficked away from his woman
and children to another state. The magistrate was aware of the
perjury, and the whole abomination, but all the truth uttered by every
colored person in the southern states would not be of any avail
against the notorious false swearing of the greatest white villain who
ever cursed the world. 'How,' said Johab Graham, can I preach
to-morrow?' I replied, 'Very well; go and thunder the doctrine of
retribution in their ears, Obadiah 15, till by the divine blessing you
kill or cure them. My friends, John M. Nelson of Hillsborough, Ohio,
Samuel Linn, and Robert Herron, and others of the same vicinity, could
'make both the ears of every one who heareth them tingle' with the
accounts which they can give of slave-driving by professors of
religion in the Shenandoah Valley, Virginia.
"In 1815, near Frederick, in Maryland, a most barbarous planter was
killed in a fit of desperation, by four of his slaves _in
self-defence_. It was declared by those slaves while in prison that,
besides his atrocities among their female associates, he had
deliberately butchered a number of his slaves. The four men were
murdered by law, to appease the popular clamor. I saw them executed on
the twenty-eighth day of Jan'y, 1816. The facts I received from the
Rev. Patrick Davidson of Frederick, who constantly visited them during
their imprisonment--and who became an abolitionist in consequence of
the disclosures which he heard from those men in the jail. The name of
the planter is not distinctly recollected, but it can be known by a
inspection of the record of the trial in the clerk's office,
Frederick.
"A minister of Virginia, still living, and whose name must not be
mentioned for fear of Nero Preston and his confederate-hanging
myrmidons, informed me of this fact in 1815, in his own house. 'A
member of my church, said he, lately whipped a colored youth to death.
What shall I do?' I answered, 'I hope you do not mean to continue him
in your church.' That minister replied, 'How can we help it'
We dare not call him to an account. We have no legal testimony.'
Their communion season was then approaching. I addressed his
wife,--'Mrs. ---- do you mean to sit at the Lord's table with that
murderer?'--,'Not I,' she answered: 'I would as soon commune with the
devil himself.' The slave killer was equally unnoticed by the civil
and ecclesiastical authority.
"John Baxter, a Presbyterian elder, the brother of that slaveholding
doctor in divinity, George A. Baxter, held as a slave the wife of a
Baptist colored preacher, familiarly called 'Uncle Jack.' In a late
period of pregnancy he scourged her so that the lives of herself and
her unborn child were considered in jeopardy. Uncle Jack was advised
to obtain the liberation of his wife. Baxter finally agreed, I think,
to sell the woman and her children, three of them, I believe for six
hundred dollars, and an additional hundred if the unborn child
survived a certain period after its birth. Uncle Jack was to pay one
hundred dollars per annum for his wife and children for seven years,
and Baxter held a sort of mortgage upon them for the payment. Uncle
Jack showed me his back in furrows like a ploughed field. His master
used to whip up the flesh, then beat it downwards, and then apply the
'negro plaster,' salt, pepper, mustard, and vinegar, until all Jack's
back was almost as hard and unimpressible as the bones. There is
slaveholding religion! A Presbyterian elder receiving from a Baptist
preacher seven hundred dollars for his wife and children. James Kyle
and uncle Jack used to tell that story with great Christian
sensibility; and uncle Jack would weep tears of anguish over his
wife's piteous tale, and tears of ecstasy at the same moment that he
was free, and that soon, by the grace of God, his wife and children,
as he said, 'would be all free together.'"
Rev. JAMES NOURSE, a Presbyterian clergyman of Mifflia co. Penn.,
whose father is, we believe, a slaveholder in Washington City, says,--
"The Rev. Mr. M----, now of the Huntingdon Presbytery, after an absence
of many months, was about visiting his old friends on what is commonly
called the 'Eastern Shore.' Late in the afternoon, on his journey, he
called at the house of Rev. A.C. of P----town, Md. With this brother
he had been long acquainted. Just at that juncture Mr. C. was about
proceeding to whip a colored female, who was his slave. She was firmly
tied to a post in FRONT of his dwelling-house. The arrival of a
clerical visitor at such a time, occasioned a temporary delay in the
execution of Mr. C's purpose. But the delay was only temporary; for
not even the presence of such a guest could destroy the bloody design.
The guest interceded with all the mildness yet earnestness of a
brother and new visitor. But all in vain, 'the woman had been saucy
and must be punished.' The cowhide was accordingly produced, and the
_Rev. Mr. C_., a large and very stout man, applied it 'manfully' on
'woman's' bare and 'shrinking flesh.' I say bare, because you know
that the slave women generally have but three or four inches of the
arm near the shoulder covered, and the neck is left entirely exposed.
As the cowhide moved back and forward, striking right and left, on the
head, neck and arms, at every few strokes the sympathizing guest would
exclaim, 'O, brother C. desist' But brother C. pursued his brutal
work, till, after inflicting about sixty lashes, the woman was found
to be suffused with blood on the hinder part of her neck, and under
her frock between the shoulders. Yet this Rev. gentleman is well
esteemed in the church--was, three or four years since, moderator of
the synod of Philadelphia, and yet walks abroad, feeling himself
unrebuked by law or gospel. Ah, sir does not this narration give
fearful force to the query--_What has the church to do with slavery_?'
Comment on the facts is unnecessary, yet allow me to conclude by
saying, that it is my opinion such occurrences _are not rare in the
south_.