The Anti-Slavery Examiner Volume III Part 26

"The overseer told me, he was so addicted to running away, it did not do any good to whip him for it. He said he kept this gag constantly on him, and intended to do so as long as he was on the plantation: so that, if he ran away, he could not eat, and would starve to death. The slave asked for drink in my presence; and the overseer made him lie down on his back, and turned water on his face two or three feet high, in order to torment him, as he could not swallow a drop.--The slave then asked permission to go to the river; which being granted, he thrust his face and head entirely under the water, that being the only way he could drink with his gag on. The gag was taken off when he took his food, and then replaced afterwards."

EXTRACT OF A LETTER FROM MRS. SOPHIA LITTLE, of Newport, Rhode Island, daughter of Hon. Asher Robbins, senator in Congress for that state.

"There was lately found, in the hold of a vessel engaged in the southern trade, by a person who was clearing it out, an iron collar, with three horns projecting from it. It seems that a young female slave, on whose slender neck was riveted this fiendish instrument of torture, ran away from her tyrant, and begged the captain to bring her off with him. This the captain refused to do; but unriveted the collar from her neck, and threw it away in the hold of the vessel. The collar is now at the anti-slavery office, Providence. To the truth of these facts Mr. William H. Reed, a gentleman of the highest moral character, is ready to vouch.

"Mr. Reed is in possession of many facts of cruelty witnessed by persons of veracity; but these witnesses are not willing to give their names. One case in particular he mentioned. Speaking with a certain captain, of the state of the slaves at the south, the captain contended that their punishments were often very _lenient_; and, as an instance of their excellent clemency, mentioned, that in one instance, not wishing to whip a slave, they sent him to a blacksmith, and had an iron band fastened around him, with three long projections reaching above his head; and this he wore some time."

EXTRACT OF A LETTER FROM MR. JONATHON F. BALDWIN, of Lorain county, Ohio. Mr. B. was formerly a merchant in Ma.s.sillon, Ohio, and an elder in the Presbyterian Church there.

"Dear Brother,--In conversation with Judge Lyman, of Litchfield county, Connecticut, last June, he stated to me, that several years since he was in Columbia, South Carolina, and observing a colored man lying on the floor of a blacksmith's shop, as he was pa.s.sing it, his curiosity led him in. He learned the man was a slave and rather unmanageable. Several men were attempting to detach from his ankle an iron which had been bent around it.

"The iron was a piece of a flat bar of the ordinary size from the forge hammer, and bent around the ankle, the ends meeting, and forming a hoop of about the diameter of the leg. There was one or more strings attached to the iron and extending up around his neck, evidently so to suspend it as to prevent its galling by its weight when at work, yet it had galled or griped till the leg had swollen out beyond the iron and inflamed and suppurated, so that the leg for a considerable distance above and below the iron, was a ma.s.s of putrefaction, the most loathsome of any wound he had ever witnessed on any living creature. The slave lay on his back on the floor, with his leg on an anvil which sat also on the floor, one man had a chisel used for splitting iron, and another struck it with a sledge, to drive it between the ends of the hoop and separate it so that it might be taken off. Mr. Lyman said that the man swung the sledge over his shoulders as if splitting iron, and struck many blows before he succeeded in parting the ends of the iron at all, the bar was so large and stubborn--at length they spread it as far as they could without driving the chisel so low as to ruin the leg. The slave, a man of twenty-five years, perhaps, whose countenance was the index of a mind ill adapted to the degradations of slavery, never uttered a word or a groan in all the process, but the copious flow of sweat from every pore, the dreadful contractions and distortions of every muscle in his body, showed clearly the great amount of his sufferings; and all this while, such was the diseased state of the limb, that at every blow, the b.l.o.o.d.y, corrupted matter gushed out in all directions several feet, in such profusion as literally to cover a large area around the anvil. After various other fruitless attempts to spread the iron, they concluded it was necessary to weaken by filing before it could be got off which he left them attempting to do."

Mr. WILLIAM DROWN, a well known citizen of Rhode Island, formerly of Providence, who has traveled in nearly all the slave states, thus testifies in a recent letter:

"I recollect seeing large gangs of slaves, generally a considerable number in each gang, being chained, pa.s.sing westward over the mountains from Maryland, Virginia, &c. to the Ohio. On that river I have frequently seen flat boats loaded with them, and their keepers armed with pistols and dirks to guard them.

"At New Orleans I recollect seeing gangs of slaves that were driven out every day, the Sabbath not excepted, to work on the streets.

These had heavy chains to connect two or more together, and some had iron collars and yokes, &c. The noise as they walked, or worked in their chains, was truly dreadful!"

Rev. THOMAS SAVAGE, pastor of the Congregational Church at Bedford, New Hampshire, who was for some years a resident of Mississippi and Louisiana, gives the following fact, in a letter dated January 9, 1839.

"In 1819, while employed as an instructor at Second Creek, near Natchez, Mississippi, I resided on a plantation where I witnessed the following circ.u.mstance. One of the slaves was in the habit of running away. He had been repeatedly taken, and repeatedly whipped, with great severity, but to no purpose. He would still seize the first opportunity to escape from the plantation. At last his owner declared, I'll fix him, I'll put a stop to his running away. He accordingly took him to a blacksmith, and had an _iron head-frame_ made for him, which may be called lock-jaw, from the use that was made of it. It had a lock and key, and was so constructed, that when on the head and locked, the slave could not open his mouth to take food, and the design was to prevent his running away. But the device proved unavailing. He was soon missing, and whether by his own desperate effort, or the aid of others, contrived to sustain himself with food; but he was at last taken, and if my memory serves me, his life was soon terminated by the cruel treatment to which he was subjected."

The Western Luminary, a religious paper published at Lexington, Kentucky, in an editorial article, in the summer of 1833, says:

"A few weeks since we gave an account of a company of men, women and children, part of whom were manacled, pa.s.sing through our streets.

Last week, a number of slaves were driven through the main street of our city, among whom were a number manacled together, two abreast, all connected by, and supporting a _heavy iron chain_, which extended the whole length of the line."

TESTIMONY OF A VIRGINIAN.

The _name_ of this witness cannot be published, as it would put him in peril; but his _credibility_ is vouched for by the Rev. Ezra Fisher, pastor of the Baptist Church, Quincy, Illinois, and Dr. Richard Eels, of the same place. These gentlemen say of him, "We have great confidence in his integrity, discretion, and strict Christian principle." He says--

"About five years ago, I remember to have pa.s.sed, in _a single day_, four droves of slaves for the south west; the largest drove had 350 slaves in it, and the smallest upwards of 200. I counted 68 or 70 in a single _coffle_. The '_coffle chain_' is a chain fastened at one end to the centre of the bar of a pair of hand cuffs, which are fastened to the right wrist of one, and the left wrist of another slave, they standing abreast, and the chain between them. These are the head of the coffle. The other end is pa.s.sed through a ring in the bolt of the next handcuffs, and the slaves being manacled thus, two and two together, walk up, and the coffle chain is pa.s.sed, and they go up towards the head of the coffle. Of course they are closer or wider apart in the coffle, according to the number to be coffled, and to the length of the chain. _I have seen HUNDREDS of droves and chain-coffles of this description_, and every coffle was a scene of misery and wo, of tears and brokenness of heart."

Mr. SAMUEL HALL a teacher in Marietta College, Ohio, gives, in a late letter, the following statement of a fellow student, from Kentucky, of whom he says, "he is a professor of religion, and worthy of entire confidence."

"I have seen at least _fifteen_ droves of 'human cattle,' pa.s.sing by us on their way to the south; and I do not recollect an exception, where there were not more or less of them _chained_ together."

Mr. GEORGE P.C. HUSSEY, of Fayetteville, Franklin county, Pennsylvania, writes thus:

"I was born and raised in Hagerstown, Washington county, Maryland, where slavery is perhaps milder than in any other part of the slave states; and yet I have seen _hundreds_ of colored men and women chained together, two by two, and driven to the south. I have seen slaves tied up and lashed till the blood ran down to their heels."

Mr. GIDDINGS, member of Congress from Ohio, in his speech in the House of Representatives, Feb. 13, 1839, made the following statement:

"On the beautiful avenue in front of the Capitol, members of Congress, during this session, have been compelled to turn aside from their path, to permit a coffle of slaves, males and females, _chained to each other by their necks_, to pa.s.s on their way to this _national slave market_."

Testimony of JAMES K. PAULDING, Esq. the present Secretary of the United States' Navy.

In 1817, Mr. Paulding published a work, ent.i.tled 'Letters from the South, written during an excursion in the summer of 1816.' In the first volume of that work, page 128, Mr. P. gives the following description:

"The sun was shining out very hot--and in turning the angle of the road, we encountered the following group: first, a little cart drawn by one horse, in which five or six half naked black children were tumbled like pigs together. The cart had no covering, and they seemed to have been broiled to sleep. Behind the cart marched three black women, with head, neck and b.r.e.a.s.t.s uncovered, and without shoes or stockings: next came three men, bare-headed, and _chained together with an ox-chain_. Last of all, came a white man on horse back, carrying his pistols in his belt, and who, as we pa.s.sed him, had the impudence to look us in the face without blushing. At a house where we stopped a little further on, we learned that he had bought these miserable beings in Maryland, and was marching them in this manner to one of the more southern states. Shame on the State of Maryland! and I say, shame on the State of Virginia! and every state through which this wretched cavalcade was permitted to pa.s.s! I do say, that when they (the slaveholders) permit such flagrant and indecent outrages upon humanity as that I have described; when they sanction a villain in thus marching half naked women and men, loaded with chains, without being charged with any crime but that of being _black_ from one section of the United States to another, hundreds of miles in the face of day, they disgrace themselves, and the country to which they belong."[10]

[Footnote 10: The fact that Mr. Paulding, in the reprint of these "Letters," in 1835, struck out this pa.s.sage with all others disparaging to slavery and its supporters, does not impair the force of his testimony, however much it may sink the man. Nor will the next generation regard with any more reverence, his character as a prophet, because in the edition of 1835, two years after the American Antislavery Society was formed, and when its auxiliaries were numbered by hundreds, he inserted a _prediction_ that such movements would be made at the North, with most disastrous results. "Wot ye not that such a man as I can certainly divine!" Mr. Paulding has already been taught by Judge Jay, that he who aspires to the fame of an oracle, without its inspiration, must resort to other expedients to prevent detection, than the clumsy one of _antedating_ his responses.]

III. BRANDINGS, MAIMINGS, GUY-SHOT WOUNDS, &c.

The slaves are often branded with hot irons, pursued with fire arms and _shot_, hunted with dogs and torn by them, shockingly maimed with knives, dirks, &c.; have their ears cut off, their eyes knocked out, their bones dislocated and broken with bludgeons, their fingers and toes cut off, their faces and other parts of their persons disfigured with scars and gashes, _besides_ those made with the lash.

We shall adopt, under this head, the same course as that pursued under previous ones,--first give the testimony of the slaveholders themselves, to the mutilations, &c. by copying their own graphic descriptions of them, in advertis.e.m.e.nts published under their own names, and in newspapers published in the slave states, and, generally, in their own immediate vicinity. We shall, as heretofore, insert only so much of each advertis.e.m.e.nt as will be necessary to make the point intelligible.

Mr. Micajah Ricks, Nash County, North Carolina, in the Raleigh "Standard," July 18, 1838.

"Ranaway, a negro woman and two children; a few days before she went off, _I burnt her with a hot iron_, on the left side of her face,_ I tried to make the letter M._"

Mr. Asa B. Metcalf, Kingston, Adams Co. Mi. in the "Natchez Courier;'

June 15, 1832.

"Ranaway Mary, a black woman, has a _scar_ on her back and right arm near the shoulder, _caused by a rifle ball._"

Mr. William Overstreet, Benton, Yazoo Co. Mi. in the "Lexington (Kentucky) Observer," July 22, 1838.

"Ranaway a negro man named Henry, _his left eye out_, some scars from a _dirk_ on and under his left arm, and _much scarred_ with the whip."

Mr. R.P. Carney, Clark Co. Ala., in the Mobile Register, Dec. 22, 1832

One hundred dollars reward for a negro fellow Pompey, 40 years old, he is _branded_ on the _left jaw_.

Mr. J. Guyler, Savannah Georgia, in the "Republican," April 12, 1837.

"Ranaway Laman, an old negro man, grey, has _only one eye._"

J.A. Brown, jailor, Charleston, South Carolina, in the "Mercury," Jan.