Volume III Part 36 (2/2)
”A negro woman was found chained, covered with bruises and wounds from severe flogging.--All the apartments were then forced open. In a room on the ground floor, two more were found chained, and in a deplorable condition. Up stairs and in the garret, four more were found chained; some so weak as to be unable to walk, and all covered with wounds and sores. One mulatto boy declares himself to have been chained for five months, being fed daily with only a handful of meal, and receiving every morning the most cruel treatment.”
The New Orleans Courier says:--
”We saw one of these miserable beings.--He had a large hole in his head--his body, from head to foot, was covered with scars and filled with worms.”
The New Orleans Mercantile Advertiser says:
”Seven poor unfortunate slaves were found--some chained to the floor, others with chains around their necks, fastened to the ceiling; and one poor old man, upwards of sixty years of age, chained hand and foot, and made fast to the floor, in a _kneeling position_. His head bore the appearance of having been beaten until it was broken, and the worms were actually to be seen making a feast of his brains!! A woman had her back literally cooked (if the expression may be used) with the lash; _the very bones might be seen projecting through the skin!_”
The New York Sun, of Feb. 21, 1837, contains the following:--
”Two negroes, runaways from Virginia, were overtaken a few days since near Johnstown, Cambria co. Pa. when the persons in pursuit called out for them to stop or they would shoot them.--One of the negroes turned around and said, he would die before he would be taken, and at the moment received a rifle ball through his knee: the other started to run, but was brought to the ground by a ball being shot in his back.
After receiving the above wounds they made battle with their pursuers, but were captured and brought into Johnstown. It is said that the young men who shot them had orders to take them dead or alive.”
Mr. M.M. SHAFTER, of Townsend, Vermont, recently a graduate of the Wesleyan University at Middletown, Connecticut, makes the following statement:
”Some of the events of the Southampton, Va. insurrection were narrated to me by Mr. Benjamin W. Britt, from Ridd.i.c.ksville, N.C. Mr. Britt claimed the honor of having shot a black on that occasion, for the crime of disobeying Mr. Britt's imperative 'Stop.' And Mr. Ashurst, of Edenton, Georgia, told me that a neighbor of his 'fired at a likely negro boy of his mother,' because the said boy encroached upon his premises.”
Mr. DAVID HAWLEY, a cla.s.s leader in the Methodist Episcopal Church at St. Albans, Licking county, Ohio, who moved from Kentucky to Ohio in 1831, certifies as follows:--
”About the year 1825, a slave had escaped for Canada, but was arrested in Hardin county. On his return, I saw him in Hart county--his wrists tied together before, his arms tied close to his body, the rope then pa.s.sing behind his body, thence to the neck of a horse on which rode the master, with a club about three feet long, and of the size of a hoe handle; which, by the appearance of the slave, had been used on his head, so as to wear off the hair and skin in several places, and the blood was running freely from his mouth and nose; his heels very much bruised by the horse's feet, as his master had rode on him because he _would_ not go fast enough. Such was the slave's appearance when pa.s.sing through where I resided. Such cases were not unfrequent.”
The following is furnished by Mr. F.A. HART, of Middletown, Connecticut, a manufacturer, and an influential member of the Methodist Episcopal Church. It occurred in 1824, about twenty-five miles this side of Baltimore, Maryland.--
”I had spent the night with a Methodist brother; and while at breakfast, a person came in and called for help. We went out and found a crowd collected around a carriage. Upon approaching we discovered that a slave-trader was endeavoring to force a woman into his carriage. He had already put in three children, the youngest apparently about eight years of age. The woman was strong, and whenever he brought her to the side of the carriage, she resisted so effectually with her feet that he could not get her in. The woman becoming exhausted, at length, by her frantic efforts, he thrust her in with great violence, _stamped her down upon the bottom with his feet_! shouted to the driver to go on; and away they rolled, the miserable captives moaning and shrieking, until their voices were lost in the distance.”
Mr. SAMUEL HALL, a teacher in Marietta College, Ohio, writes as follows:--
”Mr. ISAAC C. FULLER is a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Marietta. He was a fellow student of mine while in college, and now resides in this place. He says:--In 1832, as I was descending the Ohio with a flat boat, near the 'French Islands,' so called, below Cincinnati, I saw two negroes on horseback. The horses apparently took fright at something and ran. Both jumped over a rail fence; and one of the horses, in so doing, broke one of his fore-legs, falling at the same time and throwing the negro who was upon his back. A white man came out of a house not over two hundred yards distant, and came to the spot. Seizing a stake from the fence, he knocked the negro down five or six times in succession.
”In the same year I worked for a Mr. Nowland, eleven miles above Baton Rouge, La. at a place called 'Thomas' Bend.' He had an overseer who was accustomed to flog more or less of the slaves every morning. I heard the blows and screams as regularly as we used to hear the college bell that summoned us to any duty when we went to school. This overseer was a nephew of Nowland, and there were about fifty slaves on his plantation. Nowland himself related the following to me. One of his slaves ran away, and came to the h.o.m.o Chitto river, where he found no means of crossing. Here he fell in with a white man who knew his master, being on a journey from that vicinity. He induced the slave to return to Baton Rouge, under the promise of giving him a pa.s.s, by which he might escape, but, in reality, to betray him to his master.
This he did, instead of fulfilling his promise. Nowland said that he took the slave and inflicted five hundred lashes upon him, cutting his back all to pieces, and then thew on hot embers. The slave was on the plantation at the time, and told me the same story. He also rolled up his sleeves, and showed me the scars on his arms, which, in consequence, appeared in places to be callous to the bone. I was with Nowland between five and six months.”
Rev. JOHN RANKIN, formerly of Tennessee, now pastor of the Presbyterian Church of Ripley, Ohio, has furnished the following statement:--
”The Rev. LUDWELL G. GAINES, now pastor of the Presbyterian Church of Goshen, Clermont county, Ohio, stated to me, that while a resident of a slave state, he was summoned to a.s.sist in taking a man who had made his black woman work naked several days, and afterwards murdered her.
The murderer armed himself, and threatened to shoot the officer who went to take him; and although there was ample a.s.sistance at hand, the officer declined further interference.”
Mr. RANKIN adds the following:--
<script>