f the free states, are ministers of the gospel, agents of
benevolent societies, and teachers who have traveled and temporarily
resided in the slave states--classes of persons less likely than any
others to witness cruelties, because slaveholders generally take more
pains to keep such visitors in ignorance than others, because their
vocations would furnish them fewer opportunities for witnessing them,
and because they come in contact with a class of society in which
fewer atrocities are committed than in any other, and that too, under
circumstances which make it almost impossible for them to witness
those which are actually committed.

Of the numerous classes of persons from the north who temporarily
reside in the slave states, the mechanics who find employment on the
_plantations_, are the only persons who are in circumstances to look
"behind the scenes." Merchants, pedlars, venders of patents, drovers,
speculators, and almost all descriptions of persons who go from the
free states to the south to make money see little of slavery, except
_upon the road_, at public inns, and in villages and cities.

Let not the reader infer from what has been said, that the
_parlor_-slaves, chamber-maids, &c. in the slave states are not
treated with cruelty--far from it. They often experience terrible
inflictions; not generally so terrible or so frequent as the
field-hands, and very rarely in the presence of guests[24]
House-slaves are for the most part treated far better than
plantation-slaves, and those under the immediate direction of the
master and mistress, than those under overseers and drivers. It is
quite worthy of remark, that of the thousands of northern men who have
visited the south, and are always lauding the kindness of slaveholders
and the comfort of the slaves, protesting that they have never seen
cruelties inflicted on them, &c. each perhaps, without exception, has
some story to tell which reveals, better perhaps than the most
barbarous butchery could do, a public sentiment toward slaves, showing
that the most cruel inflictions must of necessity be the constant
portion of the slaves.

[Footnote 24: Rev. JOSEPH M. SADD, a Presbyterian clergyman, in
Castile, Genesee county, N.Y. recently from Missouri, where he has
preached five years, in the midst of slaveholders, says, in a letter
just received, speaking of the pains taken by slaveholders to conceal
from the eyes of strangers and visitors, the cruelties which they
in