ompelled to lie down on the ground with my face to the earth. Four
stakes were driven in the ground, to which my hands and feet were
tied. Then the overseer stood over me with the lash and laid it on
according to the Deacon's order. Fifty lashes were laid on before
stopping. I was then lectured with reference to my going to prayer
meeting without his orders, and running away to escape flogging.

While I suffered under this dreadful torture, I prayed, and wept, and
implored mercy at the hand of slavery, but found none. After I was
marked from my neck to my heels, the Deacon took the gory lash, and
said he thought there was a spot on my back yet where he could put in
a few more. He wanted to give me something to remember him by, he
said.

After I was flogged almost to death in this way, a paddle was brought
forward and eight or ten blows given me with it, which was by far
worse than the lash. My wounds were then washed with salt brine, after
which I was let up. A description of such paddles I have already given
in another page. I was so badly punished that I was not able to work
for several days. After being flogged as described, they took me off
several miles to a shop and had a heavy iron collar riveted on my neck
with prongs extending above my head, on the end of which there was a
small bell. I was not able to reach the bell with my hand. This heavy
load of iron I was compelled to wear for six weeks. I never was
allowed to lie in the same house with my family again while I was the
slave of Whitfield. I either had to sleep with my feet in the stocks,
or be chained with a large log chain to a log over night, with no bed
or bedding to rest my wearied limbs on, after toiling all day in the
cotton field. I suffered almost death while kept in this confinement;
and he had ordered the overseer never to let me loose again; saying
that I thought of getting free by running off, but no negro should
ever get away from him alive.

I have omitted to state that this was the second time I had run away
from him; while I was gone the first time, he extorted from my wife
the fact that I had been in the habit of running away, before we left
Kentucky; that I had been to Canada, and that I was trying to learn
the art of reading and writing. All this was against me.

It is true that I was striving to learn myself to write. I was a kind
of a house servant and was frequently sent off on errands, but never
without a written pass; and on Sund