late member of Congress from South Carolina; the
writer, speaking of the awe with which the slaves regard the whites,
says,--
"The northerner looks upon a band of negroes as upon so many _men_,
but the planter or southerner _views them in a very different light._"
Extract from the speech of Mr. SUMMERS, of Virginia, in the
legislature of that state, Jan. 26, 1832. See the Richmond Whig.
"When, in the sublime lessons of Christianity, he (the slaveholder) is
taught to 'do unto others as he would have others do unto him,' HE
NEVER DREAMS THAT THE DEGRADED NEGRO IS WITHIN THE PALE OF THAT HOLY
CANON."
PRESIDENT JEFFERSON, in his letter to GOVERNOR COLES, of Illinois,
dated Aug. 25, 1814, asserts, that slaveholders regard their slaves as
brutes, in the following remarkable language.
"Nursed and educated in the daily habit of seeing the degraded
condition, both bodily and mental, of these unfortunate beings [the
slaves], FEW MINDS HAVE YET DOUBTED BUT THAT THEY WERE AS LEGITIMATE
SUBJECTS OF PROPERTY AS THEIR HORSES OR CATTLE."
Having shown that slaveholders regard their slaves as mere working
animals and cattle, we now proceed to show that their actual treatment
of them, is _worse_ than it would be if they were brutes. We repeat
it, SLAVEHOLDERS TREAT THEIR SLAVES WORSE THAN THEY DO THEIR BRUTES.
Whoever heard of cows or sheep being deliberately tied up and beaten
and lacerated till they died? or horses coolly tortured by the hour,
till covered with mangled flesh, or of swine having their legs tied
and being suspended from a tree and lacerated with thongs for hours,
or of hounds stretched and made fast at full length, flayed with
whips, red pepper rubbed into their bleeding gashes, and hot brine
dashed on to aggravate the torture? Yet just such forms and degrees of
torture are _daily_ perpetrated upon the slaves. Now no man that knows
human nature will marvel at this. Though great cruelties have always
been inflicted by men upon brutes, yet incomparably the most horrid
ever perpetrated, have been those of men upon _their own species_. Any
leaf of history turned over at random has proof enough of this. Every
reflecting mind perceives that when men hold _human beings_ as
_property_, they must, from the nature of the case, treat them worse
than they treat their horses and oxen. It is impossible for _cattle_
to excite in men such tempests of fury as men excite in each other.
Men are often provoked if their ho
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