slaveholders who wrote the preceding advertisements, describing the
work of their own hands, in branding with hot irons, maiming,
mutilating, cropping, shooting, knocking out the teeth and eyes of
their slaves, breaking their bones, &c., have manifested, _as far as
they have gone_ in the description, a commendable fidelity to truth.

It is probable that some of the scars and maimings in the preceding
advertisements were the result of accidents; and some _may be_ the
result of violence inflicted by the slaves upon each other. Without
arguing that point, we say, these are the _facts_; whoever reads and
ponders them, will need no argument to convince him, that the
proposition which they have been employed to sustain, _cannot be
shaken_. That any considerable portion of them were _accidental_, is
totally improbable, from the nature of the case; and is in most
instances disproved by the advertisements themselves. That they have
not been produced by assaults of the slaves upon each other, is
manifest from the fact, that injuries of that character inflicted by
the slaves upon each other, are, as all who are familiar with the
habits and condition of slaves well know, exceedingly rare; and of
necessity must be so, from the constant action upon them of the
strongest dissuasives from such acts that can operate on human nature.

Advertisements similar to the preceding may at any time be gathered by
scores from the daily and weekly newspapers of the slave states.
Before presenting the reader with further testimony in proof of the
proposition at the head of this part of our subject, we remark, that
some of the tortures enumerated under this and the preceding heads,
are not in all cases inflicted by slaveholders as _punishments_, but
sometimes merely as preventives of escape, for the greater security of
their 'property'. Iron collars, chains, &c. are put upon slaves when
they are driven or transported from one part of the country to
another, in order to keep them from running away. Similar measures are
often resorted to upon plantations. When the master or owner suspects
a slave of plotting an escape, an iron collar with long 'horns,' or a
bar of iron, or a ball and chain, are often fastened upon him, for the
double purpose of retarding his flight, should he attempt it, and of
serving as an easy means of detection.

Another inhuman method of _marking_ slaves, so that they may be easily
described and detected when they escape, is ca