sgraced and thought no more of than beasts?--and are separated from
their mothers, and husbands, and children, and sisters, just as cattle are
sold and separated? Is it happiness for a driver in the field to take down
his wife or sister or child, and strip them, and whip them in such a
disgraceful manner?--women that have had children exposed in the open
field to shame! There is no modesty or decency shown by the owner to his
slaves; men, women, and children are exposed alike. Since I have been here
I have often wondered how English people can go out into the West Indies
and act in such a beastly manner. But when they go to the West Indies,
they forget God and all feeling of shame, I think, since they can see and
do such things. They tie up slaves like hogs--moor[18] them up like cattle,
and they lick them, so as hogs, or cattle, or horses never were
flogged;--and yet they come home and say, and make some good people
believe, that slaves don't want to get out of slavery. But they put a
cloak about the truth. It is not so. All slaves want to be free--to be
free is very sweet. I will say the truth to English people who may read
this history that my good friend, Miss S----, is now writing down for me.
I have been a slave myself--I know what slaves feel--I can tell by myself
what other slaves feel, and by what they have told me. The man that says
slaves be quite happy in slavery--that they don't want to be free--that
man is either ignorant or a lying person. I never heard a slave say so. I
never heard a Buckra man say so, till I heard tell of it in England. Such
people ought to be ashamed of themselves. They can't do without slaves,
they say. What's the reason they can't do without slaves as well as in
England? No slaves here--no whips--no stocks--no punishment, except for
wicked people. They hire servants in England; and if they don't like them,
they send them away: they can't lick them. Let them work ever so hard in
England, they are far better off than slaves. If they get a bad master,
they give warning and go hire to another. They have their liberty. That's
just what we want. We don't mind hard work, if we had proper treatment,
and proper wages like English servants, and proper time given in the week
to keep us from breaking the Sabbath. But they won't give it: they will
have work--work--work, night and day, sick or well, till we are quite done
up; and we must not speak up nor look amiss, however much we be abused.
And the