Volume III Part 36 (1/2)
MR. EZEKIEL BIRDSEYE, a highly respected citizen of Cornwall, Litchfield co., Connecticut, who resided for many years at the south, furnished to the Rev. E. R. Tyler, editor of the Connecticut Observer, the following personal testimony.
”While I lived in Limestone co., Alabama, in 1826-7, a tavern-keeper of the village of Moresville discovered a negro carrying away a piece of old carpet. It was during the Christmas holidays, when the slaves are allowed to visit their friends. The negro stated that one of the servants of the tavern owed him some twelve and a half or twenty-five cents, and that he had taken the carpet in payment. This the servant denied. The innkeeper took the negro to a field near by, and whipped him cruelly. He then struck him with a stake, and punched him in the face and mouth, knocking out some of his teeth. After this, he took him back to the house, and committed him to the care of his son, who had just then come home with another young man. This was at evening.
They whipped him by turns, with heavy cowskins, and made the _dogs shake him_. A Mr. Phillips, who lodged at the house, heard the cruelty during the night. On getting up he found the negro in the bar-room, terribly mangled with the whip, and his flesh so torn by the dogs, that the cords were bare. He remarked to the landlord that he was dangerously hurt, and needed care. The landlord replied that he deserved none. Mr. Phillips went to a neighboring magistrate, who took the slave home with him, where he soon died. The father and son were both tried, and acquitted!! A suit was brought, however, for damages in behalf of the owner of the slave, a young lady by the name of Agnes Jones. _I was on the jury when these facts were stated on oath_. Two men testified, one that he would have given $1000 for him, the other $900 or $950. The jury found the latter sum.
”At Union Court House, S.C., a tavern-keeper, by the name of Samuel Davis, procured the conviction and execution of his own slave, for stealing a cake of gingerbread from a grog shop. The slave raised the latch of the back door, and took the cake, doing no other injury. The shop keeper, whose name was Charles Gordon, was willing to forgive him, but his master procured his conviction and execution by hanging.
The slave had but one arm; and an order on the state treasury by the court that tried him, which also a.s.sessed his value, brought him more money than he could have obtained for the slave in market.”
Mr. ----, an elder of the Presbyterian Church in one of the slave states, lately wrote a letter to an agent of the Anti-Slavery Society, in which he states the following fact. The name of the writer is with the Executive Committee of the American Anti-Slavery Society.
”I was pa.s.sing through a piece of timbered land, and on a sudden I heard a sound as of murder; I rode in that direction, and at some distance discovered a naked black man, hung to the limb of a tree by his hands, his feet chained together, and a pine rail laid with one end on the chain between his legs, and the other upon the ground, to steady him; and in this condition the overseer gave him _four hundred lashes_. The miserably lacerated slave was then taken down, and put to the care of a physician. And what do you suppose was the offence for which all this was done? Simply this; his owner, observing that he laid off corn rows too crooked, he replied, 'Ma.s.sa, much corn grow on crooked row as on straight one!' This was it--this was enough. His overseer, boasting of his skill in managing a _n.i.g.g.e.r_, he was submitted to him, and treated as above.”
DAVID L. CHILD, Esq., of Northampton, Ma.s.sachusetts, Secretary of the United States' minister at the Court of Lisbon during the administration of President Monroe, stated the following fact in an oration delivered by him in Boston, in 1831. (See Child's ”Despotism of Freedom,” p. 30.
”An honorable friend, who stands high in the state and in the nation, [12] was _present at the_ burial of a female slave in Mississippi, who _had been whipped to death_ at the stake by her master, because she was gone longer of an errand to the neighboring town than her master thought necessary. Under the lash she protested tlat she was ill, and was obliged to rest in the fields. To complete the climax of horror, she was delivered of a dead infant while undergoing the punishment.”
[Footnote 12: ”The narrator of this fact is now absent from the United States, and I do not feel at liberty to mention his name.”]
The same fact is stated by MRS. CHILD in her ”Appeal.” In answer to a recent letter, inquiring of Mr. and Mrs. Child if they were now at liberty to disclose the name of their informant, Mr. C. says,--
”The witness who stated to us the fact was John James Appleton, Esq., of Cambridge, Ma.s.s. He is now in Europe, and it is not without some hesitation that I give his name. He, however, has openly embraced our cause, and taken a conspicuous part in some anti-slavery public meetings since the time that I felt a scruple at publis.h.i.+ng his name.
Mr. Appleton is a gentleman of high talents and accomplishments. He has been Secretary of Legation at Rio Janeiro, Madrid, and the Hague; Commissioner at Naples, and Charge d'Affaires at Stockholm.”
The two following facts are stated upon the authority of the REV.
JOSEPH G. WILSON, pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Salem, Was.h.i.+ngton co., Indiana.
”In Bath co., Kentucky, Mr. L., in the year '32 or '33, while intoxicated, in a fit of rage whipped a female slave until she fainted and fell on the floor. Then he whipped her to get up; then with red hot tongs he burned off her ears, and whipped her again! but all in vain. He then ordered his negro men to carry her to the cabin. There she was found dead next morning.
”One Wall, in Chester district, S.C., owned a slave, whom he hired to his brother-in-law, Wm. Beckman, for whom the slave worked eighteen months, and worked well. Two weeks after returning to his master he ran away on account of bad treatment. To induce him to return, the master sold him _nominally_ to his neighbor, to whom the slave gave himself up, and by whom he was returned to his master:--Punishment, _stripes_. To prevent escape a bar of iron was fastened with three bands, at the waist, knee, and ankle. That night he broke the bands and bar, and escaped. Next day he was taken and whipped to death, by three men, the master, Thorn, and the overseer. First, he was whipped and driven towards home; on the way he attempted to escape, and was shot at by the master,--caught, and knocked down with the b.u.t.t of the gun by Thorn. In attempting to cross a ditch he fell, with his feet down, and face on the bank; they whipped in vain to get him up--he died. His soul ascended to G.o.d, to be a swift witness against his oppressors. This took place at 12 o'clock. Next evening an inquest was held. Of thirteen jurors, summoned by the coroner, nine said it was murder; two said it was manslaughter, and two said it was JUSTIFIABLE!
He was bound over to court, tried, and acquitted--not even fined!”
The following fact is stated on the authority of Mr. WM. WILLIS, of Green Plains, Clark co. Ohio; formerly of Caroline co. on the eastern sh.o.r.e of Maryland.
”Mr. W. knew a slave called Peter White, who was sold to be taken to Georgia; he escaped, and lived a long time in the woods--was finally taken. When he found himself surrounded, he surrendered himself quietly. When his pursuers had him in their possession, they shot him in the leg, and broke it, out of mere wantonness. The next day a Methodist minister set his leg, and bound it up with splints. The man who took him, then went into his place of confinement, wantonly jumped upon his leg and crushed it. His name was William Sparks.”
Most of our readers are familiar with the horrible atrocities perpetrated in New Orleans, in 1834, by a certain Madame La Laurie, upon her slaves. They were published extensively in northern newspapers at the time. The following are extracts from the accounts as published in the New Orleans papers immediately after the occurrence. The New Orleans Bee says:--
”Upon entering one of the apartments, the most appalling spectacle met their eyes. Seven slaves, more or less horribly mutilated, were seen suspended by the neck, with their limbs apparently stretched and torn, from one extremity to the other. They had been confined for several months in the situation from which they had thus providentially been rescued; and had been merely kept in existence to prolong their sufferings, and to make them taste all that a most refined cruelty could inflict.”
The New Orleans Mercantile Advertiser says: