s their property. This
is American slavery; no marriage--no education--the light of the gospel
shut out from the dark mind of the bondman--and he forbidden by law to
learn to read. If a mother shall teach her children to read, the law in
Louisiana proclaims that she may be hanged by the neck. If the father
attempt to give his son a knowledge of letters, he may be punished by
the whip in one instance, and in another be killed, at the discretion
of the court. Three millions of people shut out from the light of
knowledge! It is easy for you to conceive the evil that must result from
such a state of things.

I now come to the physical evils of slavery. I do not wish to dwell at
length upon these, but it seems right to speak of them, not so much to
influence your minds on this question, as to let the slaveholders of
America know that the curtain which conceals their crimes is being
lifted abroad; that we are opening the dark cell, and leading the
people into the horrible recesses of what they are pleased to call their
domestic institution. We want them to know that a knowledge of their
whippings, their scourgings, their brandings, their chainings, is not
confined to their plantations, but that some Negro of theirs has broken
loose from his chains--has burst through the dark incrustation of
slavery, and is now exposing their deeds of deep damnation to the gaze
of the christian people of England.

The slaveholders resort to all kinds of cruelty. If I were disposed,
I have matter enough to interest you on this question for five or six
evenings, but I will not dwell at length upon these cruelties. Suffice
it to say, that all of the peculiar modes of torture that were resorted
to in the West India islands, are resorted to, I believe, even more
frequently, in the United States of America. Starvation, the
bloody whip, the chain, the gag, the thumb-screw, cat-hauling, the
cat-o'-nine-tails, the dungeon, the blood-hound, are all in requisition
to keep the slave in his condition as a slave in the United States. If
any one has a doubt upon this point, I would ask him to read the chapter
on slavery in Dickens's _Notes on America_. If any man has a doubt upon
it, I have here the "testimony of a thousand witnesses," which I can
give at any length, all going to prove the truth of my statement.
The blood-hound is regularly trained in the United States, and
advertisements are to be found in the southern papers of the Union, from
persons ad