ney for a man named Joseph Gwatney; he
had forty-five field hands of both sexes. The field in which they
worked at that time, lay about two miles from the house; the hands had
to cook and eat their breakfast, prepare their dinner, and be in the
field at daylight, and continue there till dark. In the evening the
cotton they had picked was weighed, and if they fell short of their
task they were whipped. One night I attended the weighing--two women
fell short of their task, and the master ordered the black driver to
take them to the quarters and flog them; one of them was to receive
twenty-five lashes and pick a peck of cotton seed. I have been with
the overseer several times through the negro quarters. The huts are
generally built of split timber, some larger than rails, twelve and a
half feet wide and fourteen feet long--some with and some without
chimneys, and generally without floors; they were generally without
daubing, and mostly had split clapboards nailed on the cracks on the
outside, though some were without even that: in some there was a kind
of rough bedstead, made from rails, polished with the axe, and put
together in a very rough manner, the bottom covered with clapboards,
and over that a bundle of worn out clothes. In some huts there was no
bedstead at all. The above description applies to the places generally
with which I was acquainted, and they were mostly _old settlements._

"In the east part of Jefferson county I built a chimney for a man
named ---- M'Coy; he had forty-seven laboring hands. Near where I was
at work, M'Coy had ordered one of his slaves to set a post for a gate.
When he came to look at it, he said the slave had not set it in the
right place; and ordered him to strip, and lie down on his face;
telling him that if he struggled, or attempted to get up, two men, who
had been called to the spot, should seize and hold him fast. The slave
agreed to be quiet, and M'Coy commenced flogging him on the bare back,
with the wagon whip. After some time the sufferer attempted to get up;
one of the slaves standing by, seized him by the feet and held him
fast; upon which he yielded, and M'Coy continued to flog him ten or
fifteen minutes. When he was up, and had put on his trowsers, the
blood came through them.

"About half a mile from M'Coy's was a plantation owned by his
step-daughter. The overseer's name was James Farr, of whom it appears
Mrs. M'Coy's waiting woman was enamoured. One night, while I lived