he purposes of common
decency. The women have for clothing a short petticoat, and a short
loose gown, something like the male's sailor-jacket, _without any
under garment, stockings, bonnets, hoods, caps, or any kind of
over-clothes._ When at work in the warm weather, they usually strip
off the loose gown, and have nothing on but a short petticoat with
some kind of covering over their breasts. Many children may be seen in
the summer months _as naked as they came into the world_. I think, as
a whole, they suffer more for the want of comfortable bed clothes,
than they do for wearing apparel. It is true, that some by begging or
buying have more clothes than above described, but the _masters
provide them with no more_. They are miserable objects of pity. It may
be said of many of them, "I was _naked_ and ye clothed me not." It is
enough to melt the hardest heart to see the ragged mothers nursing
their almost naked children, with but a morsel of the coarsest food to
eat. The Southern horses and dogs have enough to eat and good care
taken of them, but Southern negroes, who can describe their misery?

V. PUNISHMENTS.

The ordinary mode of punishing the slaves is both cruel and barbarous.
The masters seldom, if ever, try to govern their slaves by moral
influence, but by whipping, kicking, beating, starving, branding,
_cat-hauling_, loading with irons, imprisoning, or by some other cruel
mode of torturing. They often boast of having invented some new mode
of torture, by which they have "tamed the rascals," What is called a
moderate flogging at the south is horribly cruel. Should we whip our
horses for any offence as they whip their slaves for small offences,
we should expose ourselves to the penalty of the law. The masters whip
for the smallest offences, such as not performing their tasks, being
caught by the guard or patrol by night, or for taking any thing from
the master's yard without leave. For these, and the like crimes, the
slaves are whipped thirty-nine lashes, and sometimes seventy or a
hundred, on the bare back. One slave, who was under my care, was
whipped, I think one hundred lashes, for getting a small handful of
wood from his master's yard without leave. I heard an overseer
boasting to this same master that he gave one of the boys seventy
lashes, for not doing a job of work just as he thought it ought to be
done. The owner of the slave appeared to be pleased that the overseer
had been so faithful. The apology they