me.
"My informant says that he resided in Louisiana and Alabama during a
great part of the years 1819 and 1820:--that he frequently saw slaves
whipped, never saw any killed; but often heard of their being
killed:--that in several instances he had seen a slave receive, in the
space of two hours, five hundred lashes--each stroke drawing blood. He
adds that this severe whipping was always followed by the application
of strong brine to the lacerated parts.
"My informant further says, that in the spring of 1819, he steered a
boat from Louisville to New Orleans. Whilst stopping at a plantation
on the east bank of the Mississippi, between Natchez and New Orleans,
for the purpose of making sale of some of the articles with which the
boat was freighted, he and his fellow boatmen saw a shockingly cruel
punishment inflicted on a couple of slaves for the repeated offence of
running away. Straw was spread over the whole of their backs, and,
after being fastened by a band of the same material, was ignited, and
left to burn, until entirely consumed. The agonies and screams of the
sufferers he can never forget."
Dr. DAVID NELSON, late president of Marion College, Missouri, a native
of Tennessee, and till forty years old a slaveholder, said in an
Anti-Slavery address at Northampton, Mass. Jan. 1839--
"I have not attempted to harrow your feelings with stories of cruelty.
I will, however, mention one or two among the many incidents that came
under my observation as family physician. I was one day dressing a
blister, and the mistress of the house sent a little black girl into
the kitchen to bring me some warm water. She probably mistook her
message; for she returned with a bowl full of boiling water; which her
mistress no sooner perceived, than she thrust her hand into it, and
held it there till it was half cooked."
Mr. HENRY H. LOOMIS, a member of the Presbyterian Theological Seminary
in the city of New York, says, in a recent letter--
"The Rev. Mr. Hart, recently my pastor, in Otsego county, New York,
and who has spent some time at the south as a teacher, stated to me
that in the neighborhood in which he resided a slave was set to watch
a turnip patch near an academy, in order to keep off the boys who
occasionally trespassed on it. Attempting to repeat the trespass in
presence of the slave, they were told that his 'master forbad it.' At
this the boys were enraged, and hurled brickbats at the slave until
his face and oth
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