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would be the consequence? Why they would very probably take the contractor, give him a sound flogging, tar and feather him, and quit his employ. Every body knows that such a contractor could get nobody to work for him. But "the southern slaves are better off than northern free laborers." The proof is above.

I will now say a few words about treatment and condition in general. That flogging is very common and severe, appears from what has been already said. But those facts were given only in connexion with labor. The picture is not finished. I must now say that floggings for all offences, including deficiencies in work, are frightfully common and most terribly severe. How much is to be added for miscellaneous floggings, to the amount of floggings already stated, cannot be said with any degree of precision. There must of course be a very considerable accession. An overseer from Louisiana says, “On many of the plantations in Louisiana, (and he specified several and gave particulars,) the masters are drunken tyrants, and whip their negroes for the slightest offences, not unfrequently just for the sake of whipping them, if they can find no other occasion. Their field hands, with few exceptions, are whipped all round as often as once a week. They say they will get ugly if they are not whipped as often as that." This is said of those who are particularly severe: though he says there are many of them. Now with respect to the general rule. He says, that "on plantations in Louisiana having fifty hands, the average number of whippings during the whole cotton growing and cotton picking season," (which lasts from April to December,) "is from one to five or six of a day and night." I was careful to make such inquiries into particulars, as to be satisfied that his statements could in the main be relied on. I have since had their truth corroborated from other sources. This overseer plumes himself on being able to manage negroes with but little whipping. He had twenty-two hands, and he says he did not whip more than twelve or fifteen times during picking season. He told me of whipping "one resolute fellow" at the commencement of picking. It was for stealing a few pounds of cotton to put in his daily mess. He first paddled him with a handsaw till he blistered him thoroughly, then whipped him, he thought, about 150 lashes, and wound up by rubbing him with salt. Rubbing with salt and red is pepper very common after a severe whipping. The object, they say, is primarily to make it smart; but add, that it is the best thing that can be done to prevent mortification and make the gashes heal. This lenient man gave me another instance of his whipping. The subject was a woman. He says he alternately paddled with a handsaw, whipped, and talked, for about four hours. He paddled her on her buttock and the soles of her feet, and gave her he does not know how many hundred lashes. I will state one or two more facts, to show more clearly the occasions of floggings, and the manner and severity with which they are given. Last summer, the nurse of a family with whom I am very well acquainted was, for some misdemeanor, put into the stocks and kept there all night. The next morning, feeling more sulky than subdued, she took occasion to throw a large dish of water on one of the children. The master was enraged-sent for four hands from the quarters-had her tied down, and the master's daughter, who gave me the information, says she counted 250 lashes. A few days ago the mistress, who is a respectable member of the Presbyterian church in Natchez, fancied that this same nurse made too free in correcting the children. She flew into a passion-seized the broomstick-struck her three times over the head, and broke it. She then snatched up a pine stick, about an inch square and three feet long-struck her three times over the head with that, and broke it. Such occurrences as these are abundant. Northern free house servants would hardly be willing to exchange their present treatment for such usage.

Yet in

The clothing of slaves is about on a par with their food. It is of the coarsest articles, and very scanty in amount. However, most of them are clothed. the worst parts of Louisiana it is not an uncommon thing to see hands working in the field, almost or entirely naked. Their general style of living at home is in keeping with their food and clothing. You will generally find one family occupying a room about twelve or fourteen feet square. In this are two old crazy bedsteads. Sometimes having on them an old dirty mattress or straw bed; sometimes a nest gged, dirty blankets; sometimes a little loose hay or straw, and sometimes The rest of the room is occupied by a rickety table, a few old stools, kets, pots, &c. Chairs are seldom found. You may go to twenty cabing, and not find half a dozen. The very worst holes you can find in the city

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144

BURNING MEN IN ARKANSAS-SCENE IN GEORGIA.

of New York are good specimens of a slave's home. That any southern man should ever represent the condition of the colored people at the North as worse than that of the slaves at the South, I am perfectly astonished. With the condition of the colored people in several of the northern cities I am well acquainted, by personal observation and by report. I am considerably acquainted with it in many others, and I hesitate not to say, that the condition of free people of color in every northern city, is far superior to that of the slaves in the southwest.

But, dear sir, I have not yet come to the bad part of slavery. What you have heard as yet is tolerably good-comparatively. It is in the intellectual and moral condition of slaves that you behold the most hideous features of slavery. On the plantation where I now reside, there are about 100 persons above the age of twelve years, not a soul of whom can read or write. The same is the case with a large proportion of the plantations throughout the country. I am perfectly safe in saying that, including house servants and all, both in town and country, there is not one in fifty of the slave population of the southwest that can read or write. Their ignorance on all subjects, especially moral and religious, is astonishing and deplorable. May the Lord bless your efforts to bring the slaves of the South into as happy a condition as the "free laborers of the North.”—Letter to Rev. J. Leavitt.

Burning men in Arkansas.-The slave William, who murdered his master some weeks since (Huskey), and several negroes, was taken by a party a few days since, from the sheriff at Hot Spring, and burnt alive! yes, tied up to the limb of a tree, a fire built under him, and consumed in slow and lingering torture!

The circumstances of this criminal outrage are aggravated by the fact, that the evidence against the negro was of such a character, that there was no chance of his escape from a just expiation of his crime by law.-Arkansas Gazette.

Scene in Georgia.-On the morning of the execution, my master told me and all the rest of his people, that we must go to the hanging, as it was termed by him as well as others. The place of punishment was only two miles from my master's residence, and I was there in time to get a good stand near the gallows tree; by which I was enabled to see all the proceedings connected with this solemn affair. It was estimated by my master, that there were at least fifteen thousand people present at this scene, more than half of whom were blacks; all the masters for a great distance round the country having permitted or compelled their people to come to this hanging.

Billy was brought to the gallows with Lucy and Frank; but was permitted to walk beside the cart in which they rode. Under the gallows, after the rope was about her neck, Lucy confessed that the murder had been designed by her in the first place, and that Frank had only perpetrated it at her instance. She said she had at first intended to apply to Billy to assist her in the undertaking; but had afterwards communicated her designs to Frank, who offered to shoot her master, if she would supply him with a gun, and let no other person be in the secret. A long sermon was preached by a white man under the gallows, which was only the limb of a tree, and afterwards an exhortation was delivered by a black one. The two convicts were hung together; and after they were quite dead, a consultation was held amongst the gentlemen, as to the future disposition of Billy, who, having been in the house where his master was murdered, and not having given immediate information of the fact, was held to be guilty of concealing the death; and was accordingly sentenced to receive five hundred lashes. I was in the branches of a tree, close by the place where this court was held, and distinctly heard its proceedings and judgment. Some went to the woods to cut hickories, whilst others stripped Billy and tied him to a tree. More than twenty long switches, some of them six or seven feet in length, had been procured; and two men applied the rods at the same time, one standing on each side of the culprit; one of them using his heft hand. I had often seen black men whipped, and had always, where the

applied with great severity, heard the sufferer cry out and beg for mere. was

but in this case, the pain inflicted by these double blows of the hickory was so intense, that

Billy never uttered so much as a groan; and I do not believe he breathed for the space of two minutes after he received the first strokes. He shrunk his body close to the trunk of the tree, around which his arms and legs were lashed; drew his shoulders up to his head like a dying man, and trembled, or rather shivered, in all his members. The blood flowed from the commencement, and in a few minutes lay in small puddles at the root of the tree. I saw flakes of flesh as long as my finger fall out of the gashes in his back; and I believe he was insensible during all the time that he was receiving the last two hundred lashes. When the whole five hundred had been counted by the person appointed to perform this duty, the halfdead body was unbound and laid in the shade of the tree upon which I sat. The gentlemen who had done the whipping, eight or ten in number, being joined by their friends, then came under the tree, and drank punch until their dinner was made ready, under a booth of green boughs at a short distance.

After dinner, Billy, who had been groaning on the ground where he was laid, was taken up, placed in the cart in which Lucy and Frank had been brought to the gallows, and conveyed to the dwelling of his late master, where he was confined to the house and his bed more than three months, and was never worth much afterwards, while I remained in Georgia.

Certainly those who were hanged well deserved their punishment, but it was a very arbitrary exercise of power to whip a man until he was insensible, because he did not prevent a murder which was committed without his knowledge; and I could not understand the right of punishing him because he was so weak or timorous, as to refrain from a disclosure of the crime the moment it came to his ears.Life of Charles Ball.

19.

THE AFRICAN CHARACTER.

MUNGO PARK.

I was fully convinced, that whatever difference there is between the negro and the European, in the conformation of the nose, and the color of the skin, there is none in the genuine sympathies and characteristic feelings of our common nature.

[At Sego, in Bambarra, the king, being jealous of Mr. Park's intentions, forbade him to cross the river. Under these discouraging circumstances, he was advised to lodge at a distant village; but there the same distrust of the white man's purposes prevailed, and no person would allow him to enter his house. He says,] I was regarded with astonishment and fear, and was obliged to sit all day without food, under the shade of a tree. The wind rose, and there was great appearance of a heavy rain, and the wild beasts are so very numerous in the neighborhood, that I should have been under the necessity of resting among the branches of the tree. About sunset, however, as I was preparing to pass the night in this manner, and had turned my horse loose, that he might graze at liberty, a woman, returning from the labors of the field, stopped to observe me. Perceiving that I was weary and dejected, she inquired into my situation, which I briefly explained to her; whereupon, with looks of great compassion, she took up my saddle and bridle and told me to follow her. Having conducted me into her hut, she lighted a lamp, spread a mat on the floor, and told me I might remain there for the night. Finding that I was hungry, she went out, and soon returned with a very fine fish, which being broiled upon some. embers, she gave me for supper. The women then resumed their task of spinning cotton, and lightened their labor with songs, one of which must have been composed extempore, for I was myself the subject of it. It was sung by one of the young women, the rest joining in a kind of chorus. The air was sweet and plaintive, and the words literally translated, were these:

"The winds roar'd, and the rains fell;
The poor white man, faint and weary,
Came and sat under our tree.-

He has no mother to bring him milk;
No wife to grind his corn.

CHORUS.

"Let us pity the white man;

No mother has he to bring him milk.

No wife to grind his corn."

Trifling as this recital may appear, the circumstance was highly affecting to a person in my situation. I was oppressed with such unexpected kindness, and sleep fled from my eyes. In the morning,

I presented my compassionate landlady with two of the four brass buttons remaining on my waistcoat; the only recompense I could make her.

[At Kamalia, he recovered from a fever, which had tormented him several weeks. His benevolent landlord came daily to inquire after his health, and see that he had every thing for his comfort. Mr. Park assures us that the simple and affectionate manner of those around him contributed not a little to his recovery. He adds,] thus was I delivered, by the friendly care of this benevolent negro, from a situation truly deplorable. Distress and famine pressed hard upon me; I had before me the gloomy wilderness of Jallonkadoo, where the traveller sees no habitation for five successive days. I had observed, at a distance, the rapid course of the river Kokaro, and had almost marked out the place where I thought I was doomed to perish, when this friendly negro stretched out his hospitable hand for my relief. Mr. Park having travelled in company with a coffle of thirtyfive slaves, thus describes his feelings as they came near the coast: "Although I was now approaching the end of my tedious and toilsome journey, and expected in another day to meet with countrymen and friends, I could not part with my unfortunate fellow-travellers,doomed as I knew most of them to be, to a life of slavery in a foreign land, without great emotion. During a peregrination of more than five hundred miles, exposed to the burning rays of a tropical sun, these poor slaves, amidst their own infinitely greater sufferings, would commiserate mine, and frequently, of their own accord, bring water to quench my thirst, and at night collect branches and leaves to prepare me a bed in the wilderness. We parted with mutual regret and blessings. My good wishes and prayers were all I could bestow upon them, and it afforded me some consolation to be told that they were sensible I had no more to give.

All the negro nations that fell under my observation, though divided into a number of petty, independent states, subsist chiefly by the same means, live nearly in the same temperature, and possess a a wonderful similarity of disposition. The Mandingoes, in particular, are a very gentle race, cheerful, inquisitive, credulous, simple, and fond of flattery. Perhaps the most prominent defect in their character, was that insurmountable propensity, to steal from me the few effects I was possessed of. No complete justification can be offered for this conduct, because theft is a crime in their own estimation; and it must be observed that they are not habitually and generally guilty of it towards each other. But before we pronounce them a more depraved people than any other, it were well to consider, whether the lower class of people in any part of Europe, would have acted under similar circumstances, with greater honesty towards a stranger. It must be remembered that the laws of the country afforded me no protection; that every one was permitted to rob me with impunity; and that some part of my effects were of as great value in the estimation of the negroes, as pearls and diamonds would have been in the eyes of a European. Let us suppose a black merchant of Hindoostan had

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