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feet were raised a few inches from the ground, witnessed the whole, without as I recollect, while a sharpened stick was driven underneath, feeling the least compassion. So hardening is that he might rest his weight on it, or swing the influence of slavery, that it very much deby his hands. In this condition 100 lashes stroys feeling for the slave." were laid on his bare body. I stood by and

TESTIMONY OF MR. HIRAM WHITE-A NATIVE OF NORTH CAROLINA,

Mr. WHITE resided thirty-two years in Chat ham county, North Carolina, and is now a member of the Baptist Church, at Otter Creek Prairie, Illinois.

About the 20th December, 1830, a report was raised that the slaves in Chatham county, North Carolina, were going to rise on Christmas day," in consequence of which a considerable commotion ensued among the inhabitants; orders were given by the Governor to the militia captains, to appoint patrolling captains in each district, and orders were given for every man subject to mili. tary duty to patrol as their captains should di. rect. I went two nights in succession, and after that refused to patrol at all. The reason why I refused was this, orders were given to search every negro house for books or prints of any kind, and Bibles and Hymn books were particularly mentioned. And should we find any, our orders were to inflict punishment by whipping the slave until he informed who gave them to him, or how they came by them.

As regards the comforts of the slaves in the vicinity of my residence, I can say they had nothing that would bear that name. It is true, the slaves in general, of a good crop year, were tolerably well fed, but of a bad crop year, they were, as a general thing, cut short of their allowance. Their houses were pole cabins, without loft or floor. Their beds were made of what is there called "broom-straw." The men more commonly sleep on benches. Their clothing would compare well with their lodging. Whipping was common. It was hardly possible for a man with a common pair of ears, if he was out of his house but a short time on Monday mornings, to miss of hearing the sound of the lash, and the cries of

the sufferers pleading with their masters to desist. These scenes were more common throughout the time of my residence there, from 1799 to 1831.

Mr. HEDDING Of Chatham county, held a slave woman. I traveled past Heddings as often as once in two weeks during the winter of 1828, and always saw her clad in a single cotton dress, sleeves came half way to the elbow, and in order to prevent her running away, a child, supposed to be about seven years of age, was connected with her by a long chain fastened round her neck, and in this situation she was compelled all the day to grub up the roots of shrubs and sapplings to prepare ground for the plough. It is not uncommon for slaves to make up on Sundays what they are not able to perform through the week of their tasks.

At the time of the rumored insurrection above named, Chatham jail was filled with slaves who were said to have been concerned in the plot. Without the least evidence of it, they were punished in divers ways; some were whipped, some had their thumbs screwed in a vice to make them con. fess, but no proof satisfactory was ever obtained that the negroes had ever thought of an insurrection, nor did any so far as I could learn, acknowledge that an insurrection had ever been projected. From this time forth, the slaves were prohibited from assembling together for the wor. ship of God, and many of those who had previ. ously been authorized to preach the gospel were prohibited.

Amalgamation was common. There was scarce a family of slaves that had females of mature age where there were not some mulatto children.

HIRAM WHITE.

Otter Creek Prairie, Jan. 22, 1839.

TESTIMONY OF MR. JOHN M. NELSON-A NATIVE OF VIRGINIA.

Extract of a letter, dated January 3, 1839, from, ning away." For this they were scourged more

John M. Nelson, Esq., of Hillsborough. Mr. Nel. son removed from Virginia to Highland county, Ohio, many years since, where he is extensively known and respected.

I was born and raised in Augusta county, Virginia; my father was an elder in the Presbyterian Church, and was "owner" of about twenty slaves; he was what was generally termed a "good master." His slaves were generally tolerably well fed and clothed, and not over worked, they were sometimes permitted to attend church, and called in to family worship; few of them, however, availed themselves of these privileges. On some occasions I have seen him whip them severely, particularly for the crime of trying to obtain their liberty, or for what was called, "run.

severely than for any thing else. After they have been retaken, I have seen them stripped naked and suspended by the hands, sometimes to a trec, sometimes to a post, until their toes barely touched the ground, and whipped with a cowhide until the blood dripped from their backs. A boy named Jack, particularly, I have seen served in this way more than once, When Iwas quite a child, I recollect it grieved me very much to see one tied up to be whipped, and I used to intercede with tears in their behalf, and mingle my cries with theirs, and feel almost wil. ling to take part of the punishment; I have been severely rebuked by my father for this kind of sympathy. Yet, such is the hardening nature of such scenes, that from this kind of commisse. ration for the suffering slave, I became so blunt.

ed that I could not only witness their stripes with her "owners," she is permitted to read as much composure, but myself inflict them, and that as she pleases; this she can do, with the aid of without remorse. One case I have often looked glasses, in the old family Bible, which is almost back to with sorrow and contrition, particularly the only book she has ever looked into. This with

since I have been convinced that "negroes are men." When I was perhaps fourteen or fifteen years of age, I undertook to correct a young fel. low named Ned, for some supposed offence; I think it was leaving a bridle out of its proper place; he being larger and stronger than myself took hold of my arms and held me, in order to prevent my striking him; this I considered the height of insolence, and cried for help, when my father and mother both came running to my rescue. My father stripped and tied him, and took him into the orchard, where switches were plenty, and directed me to whip him; when one switch wore out he supplied me with others. After I had whipped him a while, he fell on his knees to implore forgiveness, and I kicked him in the face; my father said, " don't kick him, but whip hin;" this I did until his back was literally cov. ered with welts. I know I have repented, and trust I have obtained pardon for these things.

My father owned a woman, (we used to call aunt Grace,) she was purchased in Old Virginia. She has told me that her old master, in his will, gave her her freedom, but at his death, his sons had sold her to my father: when he bought her she manifested some unwillingness to go with him, when she was put in irons and taken by force. This was before I was born; but I remember to have seen the irons, and was told that was what they had been used for. Aunt Grace is still living, and must be between seventy and eighty years of age; she has, for the las, forty years, been an exemplary Christian. When I was a youth I took some pains to learn her to read; this is now a great consolation to her. Since age and infirmity have rendered her of little value to

some little mending for the black children, is all she does; she is still held as a slave. I well remember what a heart-rending scene there was in the family when my father sold her husband; this was, I suppose, thirty-five years ago. And yet my father was considered one of the best of masters. I know of few who were better, but of many who were worse.

The last time I saw my father, which was in the fall of 1832, he promised me that he would free all his slaves at his death. He died however without doing it; and I have understood since, that he omitted it, through the influence of Rev. Dr. Specce, a Presbyterian minister, who lived in the family, and was a a warm friend of the Colonization Society.

About the year 1809 or 10, I became a student of Rev. George Bourne; he was the first aboli. tionist I had ever seen, and the first I had ever heard pray or plead for the oppressed, which gave me the first misgivings about the innocence of slaveholding. I received impressions from Mr. Bourne which I could not get rid of, and deter. mined in my own mind that when I settled in life, it should be in a free state; this determination I carried into effect in 1813, when I removed to this place, which I supposed at that time, to be all the opposition to slavery that was necessary, but the moment I became convinced that all slaveholding was in itself sinful, I became an abolitionist, which was about four years ago.

* Mr. Bourne resided seven years in Virginia, "in perils among false brethren," fiercely persecuted for his faithful testimony against slavery. More than twenty years since ne published ne published a work entitled "The Book and Slavery irre

TESTIMONY OF ANGELINA GRIMKÉ WELD.

Mrs. Weld is the youngest daughter of the
late Judge Grimké, of the Supreme Court of
South Carolina, and a sister of the late Hon.
Thomas S. Grimké, of Charleston.

FORT LEE, Bergen Co., New Jersey,
Fourth month 6th, 1839.

}

I sit down to comply with thy request, preferred in the name of the Executive Committee of the American Anti-Slavery Society. The responsibility laid upon me by such a request, leaves me no option. While I live, and slavery lives, I must testify against it. If I should hold my peace, "the stone would cry out of the wall, and the beam out of the timber would answer it." But though I feel a necessity upon me, and "a woe unto me," if I withhold my testimony, I give it with a heavy heart. My ficsh crieth out, " if it be possible, let this cup pass from me;" but, "Father, thy will be done," is, I trust, the breathing of my spirit. Oh, the slain of the daughter of my people! they lie in all the ways; their tears fall as the rain, and are their meat day and night; their blood runneth down like water; their plundered hearths are desolate;

they weep for their husbands and children, because they are not; and the proud waves do continually go over them, while no eye pitieth, and

no man careth for their souls.

But it is not alone for the sake of my poor brothers and sisters in bonds, or for the cause of truth, and righteousness, and humanity, that I testify; the deep yearnings of affection for the mother that bore me, who is still a slaveholder, both in fact and in heart; for my brothers and sisters, (a large family circle,) and for my numerous other slaveholding kindred in South Carolina, constrain me to speak: for even were slavery no curse to its victims, the exercise of arbitrary power works such fearful ruin upon the hearts of slaveholders, that I should feel impelled to labor and pray for its overthrow with my last energies and latest breath.

I think it important to premise, that I have seen almost nothing of slavery on plantations. My testimony will have respect exclusively to the treatment of "house-servants," and chiefly those belonging to the first families in the city of Charleston, both in the religious and in the fash. ionable world. And here let me say, that the for show. A few facts will unfold the state of society in the circle with which I was familiar, far better than any general assertions I can make.

treatment of plantation slaves cannot be fully | vulgar and repulsive forms. I saw it in the city, known, except by the poor sufferers themselves, among the fashionable and the honorable, where and their drivers and overseers. In a multitude it was garnished by refinement, and decked out of instances, even the master can know very little of the actual condition of his own field-slaves, and his wife and daughters far less. A few facts concerning my own family will show this. Our permanent residence was in Charleston; our country-seat (Bellemont,) was 200 miles distant, in the north-western part of the state; where, for some years, our family spent a few months annually. Our plantation was three miles from this family mansion. There, all the field-slaves lived and worked. Occasionally, once a month, perhaps, some of the family would ride over to the plantation, but I never visited the fields where the slaves were at work, and knew almost nothing of their condition; but this I do know, that the overseers who had charge of them, were generally unprincipled and intemperate men. But I rejoice to know, that the general treatment of slaves in that region of country, was far milder than on the plantations in the lower country.

Throughout all the eastern and middle portions of the state, the planters very rarely reside permanently on their plantations. They have almost invariably two residences, and spend less than half the year on their estates. Even while spending a few months on them, politics, field. sports, races, speculations, journeys, visits, company, literary pursuits, &c., absorb so much of their time, that they must, to a considerable extent, take the condition of their slaves on trust, from the reports of their overseers. I make this statement, because these slaveholders (the wealthier class,) are, I believe, almost the only ones who visit the north with their families; and northern opinions of slavery are based chiefly on their testimony.

But not to dwell on preliminaries, I wish to record my testimony to the faithfulness and accuracy with which my beloved sister, Sarah M. Grimké, has, in her narrative and testimony,' on a preceding page, described the condition of the slaves, and the effect upon the hearts of slaveholders, (even the best,) caused by the exercise of unlimited power over moral agents. Of the particular acts which she has stated, I have no personal knowledge, as they occurred before my remembrance; but of the spirit that prompted them, and that constantly displays itself in scenes of similar horror, the recollections of my childhood, and the effaceless imprint upon my riper years, with the breaking of my heart-strings, when, finding that I was powerless to shield the victims, I tore myself from my home and friends, and became an exile among strangers-all these throng around me as witnesses, and their testi. mony is graven on my memory with a pen of

fire.

Why I did not become totally hardened, under the daily operation of this system, God only knows; in deep solemnity and gratitude, I say, it was the Lord's doing, and marvellous in mine eyes. Even before my heart was touched with the love of Christ, I used to say, "Oh that I had the wings of a dove, that I might flee away and be at rest; for I felt that there could be no rest for me in the midst of such outrages and pollutions. And yet I saw nothing of slavery in its most

I will first introduce the reader to a woman of the highest respectability-one who was foremost in every benevolent enterprise, and stood for many years, I may say, at the head of the fashionable élite of the city of Charleston, and afterwards at the head of the moral and religious female society there. It was after she had made a profession of religion, and retired from the fashionable world, that I knew her; therefore I will present her in her religious character. This lady used to keep cowhides, or small paddles, (called 'pancake sticks,') in four different apartments in her house; so that when she wished to punish, or to have punished, any of her slaves, she might not have the trouble of sending for an instrument of torture. For many years, one or other, and often more of her slaves, were flogged every day; particularly the young slaves about the house, whose faces were slapped, or their hands beat with the 'pancake stick,' for every trifling offence-and often for no fault at all. But the floggings were not all; the scoldings and abuse daily heaped upon them all, were worse: 'fools' and 'liars,' 'sluts' and 'husseys,' 'hypocrites' and 'good-for-nothing creatures,' were the common epithets with which her mouth was filled, when addressing her slaves, adults as well as children. Very often she would take a position at her window, in an upper story, and scold at her slaves while working in the garden, at some distance from the house, (a large yard intervening,) and occasionally order a flogging. I have known her thus on the watch, scolding for more than an hour at a time, in so loud a voice that the whole neighborhood could hear her; and this without the least apparent feeling of shame. Indeed, it was no disgrace among slaveholders, and did not in the least injure her standing, either as a lady or a Christian, in the aristocratic circle in which she moved. After the 'revival' in Charleston, in 1825, she opened her house to social prayer-meetings. The room in which they were held in the evening, and where the voice of prayer was heard around the family altar, and where she herself retired for private devotion thrice each day, was the very place in which, when her slaves were to be whip. ped with the cowhide, they were taken to receive the infliction; and the wail of the sufferer would be heard, where, perhaps only a few hours previous, rose the voices of prayer and praise. This mistress would occasionally send her slaves, male and female, to the Charleston work-house to be punished. One poor girl, whom she sent there to be flogged, and who was accordingly stripped naked and whipped, showed me the deep gashes on her back-I might have laid my whole finger in them-large pieces of flesh had actually been cut out by the torturing lash. She sent another female slave there, to be imprisoned and worked on the tread-mill. This girl was confined several days, and forced to work the mill while in a state of suffering from another cause. For ten days or two weeks after her return, she was lame, from

4

the violent exertion necessary to enable her to keep the step on the machine. She spoke to me with intense feeling of this outrage upon her, as a woman. Her men servants were sometimes flogged there; and so exceedingly offensive has been the putrid flesh of their lacerated backs, for days after the infliction, that they would be kept out of the house the smell arising from their wounds being too horrible to be endured. They were always stiff and sore for some days, and not in a condition to be seen by visitors.

This professedly Christian woman was a most awful illustration of the ruinous influence of arbitrary power upon the temper-her bursts of passion upon the heads of her victims were dreaded even by her own children, and very often, all the pleasure of social intercourse around the domestic board, was destroyed by her ordering the cook into her presence, and storming at him, when the dinner or breakfast was not prepared to her taste, and in the presence of all her children, commanding the waiter to slap his face. • Fault-finding, was with her the constant accom. paniment of every meal, and banished that peace which should hover around the social board, and smile on every face. It was common for her to order brothers to whip their own sisters, and sisters their own brothers, and yet no woman visited among the poor more than she did, or gave more liberally to relieve their wants. This may seem perfectly unaccountable to a northerner, but these seeming contradictions vanish when we consider that over them she possessed no arbitrary power, they were always presented to her mind as unfortunate sufferers, towards whom her sympathies most freely flowed; she was ever ready to wipe the tears from their eyes, and open wide her purse for their relief, but the others were her vassals, thrust down by public opinion beneath her feet, to be at her beck and call, ever ready to serve in all humility, her, whom God in his providence had set over them-it was their duty to abide in abject submission, and hers to compel them to do so it was thus that she reasoned. Except at family prayers, none were permitted to sit in her presence, but the seamstresses and waiting maids, and they, however delicate might be their circumstances, were forced to sit upon low stools, without backs, that they might be constantly reminded of their inferiority. A slave who waited in the house, was guilty on a particular occasion of going to visit his wife, and kept dinner waiting a little, (his wife was the slave of a lady who lived at a little distance.) When the family sat down to the table, the mistress began to scold the waiter for the offence-he attempted to excuse himself-she ordered him to hold his tongue-he ventured another apology; her son then rose from the table in a rage, and beat the face and ears of the waiter so dreadfully that the blood gushed from his mouth, and nose, and ears. This mistress was a professor of re⚫ligion; her daughter who related the circumstance, was a fellow member of the Presbyterian church with the poor outraged slave-instead of feeling indignation at this outrageous abuse of her brother in the church, she justified the deed, and said "he got just what he deserved." I solemnly believe this to be a true picture of slaveholding religion.

+

The following is another illustration of it:

A mistress in Charleston sent a grey headed female slave to the workhouse, and had her se. verely flogged. The poor old woman went to an acquaintance of mine and begged her to buy her, and told her how cruelly she had been whipped. whipped. My friend examined her lacerated back, and out of compassion did purchase her. The circumstance was mentioned to one of the former own. er's relatives, who asked her if it were true. The mistress told her it was, and said that she had made the severe whipping of this aged woman a subject of prayer, and that she believed she had done right to have it inflicted upon her. The last owner' of the poor old slave, said she, had no fault to find with her as a servant.

I remember very well that when I was a child, our next door neighbor whipped a young woman so brutally, that in order to escape his blows she rushed through the drawing-room window in the second story, and fell upon the street pavement below and broke her hip. This circumstance produced no excitement or inquiry.

The following circumstance occurred in Charleston, in 1828:

A slaveholder, after flogging a little girl about thirteen years old, set her on a table with her feet fastened in a pair of stocks. He then locked the door and took out the key. When the door was opened she was found dead, having fallen from the table. When I asked a prominent lawyer, who belonged to one of the first families in the State, whether the murderer of this helpless child could not be indicted, he coolly replied, that the slave was Mr. s property, and if he chose to suffer the loss, no one else had any thing to do with it. The loss of human life, the distress of the parents and other relatives of the little girl, seemed utterly out of his thoughts: it was the loss of property only that presented itself to his mind.

I knew a gentleman of great benevolence and generosity of character, so essentially to injure the eye of a little boy, about ten years old, as to destroy its sight, by the blow of a cowhide, inflicted whilst he was whipping him.* I have heard the same individual speak of "breaking down the spirit of a slave under the lash" as perfectly right.

I also know that an aged slave of his, (by marriage,) was allowed to get a scanty and precarious subsistence, by begging in the streets of Charleston-he was too old to work, and therefore his allowance was stopped, and he was turned out to make his living by begging.

When I was about thirteen years old, I attended a seminary, in Charleston, which was superintended by a man and his wife of superior education. They had under their instruction the daughters of nearly all the aristocracy. Their cruelty to their slaves, both male and female, I can never forget. I remember one day there was called into the school room to open a window, a

* The Jewish law would have set this servant free, for his eye's he was in slavery sold from

hand to make, but hade this onder cording to Jewish law, he was a mulatto, and therefore free under the Constitution of the United States, in whose pre

amble our fathers declare that they established it expressly to secure the blessings of liberty to themselves and their posterity."-En.

i

:

Doy whose head had been shaved in order to disgrace him, and he had been so dreadfully whipped that he could hardly walk. So horrible was the impression produced upon my mind by his heart-broken countenance and crippled person that I fainted away. The sad and ghastly countenance of one of their female mulatto slaves who used to sit on a low stool at her sewing in the piazza, is now fresh before me. She often told me, secretly, how cruelly she was whipped when they sent her to the work house. I had known so much of the terrible scourgings inflicted in that house of blood, that when I was once obliged to pass it, the very sight smote me with such horror that my limbs could hardly sustain me. I felt as if I was passing the precincts of hell. A friend of mine who lived in the neighborhood, told me she often heard the screams of the slaves under their

torture.

I once heard a physician of a high family, and of great respectability in his profession, say, that when he sent his slaves to the work-house to be flogged, he always went to see it done, that he might be sure they were properly, i. e. severely whipped. He also related the following circumstance in my presence. He had sent a youth of about eighteen to this horrible place to be whipped and afterwards to be worked upon the treadmill. From not keeping the step, which probably he COULD NOT do, in consequence of the lacerated state of his body; his arm got terribly torn, from the shoulder to the wrist. This physcian said, he went every day to attend to it himself, in order that he might use those restoratives, which would inflict the greatest possible pain. This poor boy, after being imprisoned there for some weeks, was then brought home, and compelled to wear iron clogs on his ankles for one or two months. I saw him with those irons on one day when I was at the house. This man was, when young, remarkable in the fashionable world for his elegant and fascinating manners, but the exercise of the slaveholder's power has thrown the fierce air of tyranny even over these.

I heard another man of equally high standing say, that he believed he suffered far more than his waiter did, whenever he flogged him, for he felt the exertion for days afterward, but he could not let his servant go on in the neglect of his business, it was his duty to chastise him. "His duty" to flog this boy of seventeen so severely that he felt the exertion for days after! and yet he never felt it to be his duty to instruct him, or have him in. structed, even in the common principles of morality. I heard the mother of this man say, it would be no surprise to her, if he killed a slave some day, for, that, when transported with pas. sion he did not seem to care what he did. He once broke a large stick over the back of a slave, and at another time the ivory butt-end of a long coach whip over the head of another. This last was attacked with epileptic fits some months after, and has ever since been subject to them, and occasionally to violent fits of insanity.

Southern mistresses sometimes flog their slaves themselves, though generally one slave is compelled to flog another. Whilst staying at a friend's house some years ago, I one day saw the mistress with a cow-hide in her hand, and heard her scold. ing in an under tone, her waiting man, who was

about twenty-five years old. Whether she actu. ally inflicted the blows I do not know, for I hastened out of sight and hearing. It was not the first time I had seen a mistress thus engaged. I knew she was a cruel mistress, and had heard her daughters disputing, whether their mother did right or wrong, to send the slave children, (whom she sent out to sweep chimneys) to the work house to be whipped if they did not bring in their wages regularly. This woman moved in the most fashionable circle in Charleston. The income of this family was derived mostly from the hire of their slaves, about one hundred in number. Their luxuries were blood-bought luxuries indeed. And yet what stranger would ever have inferred their cruelties from the courteous reception and bland manners of the parlor. Every thing cruel and revolting is carefully concealed from strangers, especially those from the north. Take an instance. I have known the master and mistress of a family send to their friends to borrow servants to wait on company, because their own slaves had been so cruelly flogged in the work house, that they could not walk without limping at every step, and their putrified flesh emitted such an intolerable smell that they were not fit to be in the presence of company. How can northerners know these things when they are hospitably received at southern tables and firesides? I repeat it, no one who has not been an integral part of a slaveholding community, can have any idea of its abominations. It is a whited sepulchre full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness. Blessed be God, the Angel of Truth has descended and rolled away the stone from the mouth of the sepulchre, and sits upon it. The abominations so long hidden are now brought forth before all Israel and the sun. Yes, the Angel of Truth sits upon this stone, and it can never be rolled back again.

The utter disregard of the comfort of the slaves, in little things, can scarcely be conceived by those who have not been a component part of slaveholding communities. Take a few particulars out of hundreds that might be named. In South Carolina musketoes swarm in myriads, more than half the year-they are so excessively annoying at night, that no family thinks of sleeping without nets or "musketoe-bars" hung over their bedsteads, yet slaves are never provided with them, unless it be the favorite old domestics who get the cast-off pavilions; and yet these very masters and mistresses will be so kind to their horses as to provide them with fly nets. Bedsteads and bedding too, are rarely provided for any of the slaves-if the waiters and coachmen, wait. ing maids, cooks, washers, &c., have beds at all, they must generally get them for themselves. Commonly they lie down at night on the bare floor, with a small blanket wrapped round them in winter, and in summer a coarse osnaburg sheet, or nothing. Old slaves generally have beds, but it is because when younger they have provided them for themselves.

Only two meals a day are allowed the house slaves the first at twelve o'clock. If they eat before this time, it is by stealth, and I am sure there must be a good deal of suffering among them from hunger, and particularly by children. Besides this, they are often kept from their meals by way of punishment. No table is provided for

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