"Mr. Ezekiel Birdseye, of Cornwall, Conn., a gentleman well known and highly respected in Litchfield county, who resided a number of years in South Carolina, gives the following testimony:

:

"A man by the name of Waters was killed by his slaves, in Newbury District. Three of them were tried before the court, and ordered to be burnt. I was but a few miles distant at the time, and conversed with those who saw the execution. The slaves were tied to a stake, and pitch pine wood piled around them, to which the fire was communicated. Thousands were collected to witness this barbarous transaction. Other executions of this kind took place in various parts of the state, during my residence in it, from 1818 to 1824. About three or four years ago, a young negro was burnt in Abbeville District, for an attempt at rape.'

"In the fall of 1837, there was a rumour of a projected insurrection on the Red River, in Louisiana. The citizens forthwith seized and hanged NINE SLAVES, AND THREE FREE COLOURED MEN, WITHOUT TRIAL. A few months previous to that transaction, a slave was seized in a similar manner and publicly burned to death, in Arkansas. In July, 1835, the citizens of Madison county, Mississippi, were alarmed by rumours of an insurrection, arrested five slaves and publicly executed them without trial.

"The Missouri Republican, April 30, 1838, gives the particulars of the deliberate murder of a negro man named Tom, a cook on board the steamboat Pawnee, on her passage up from New Orleans to St. Louis. Some of the facts stated by the Republican are the following;

“On Friday night, about 10 o'clock, a deaf and dumb German girl was found in the store-room with Tom. The door was locked, and at first Tom denied she was there. The girl's father came. Tom unlocked the door, and the girl was found secreted in the room behind a barrel. The next morning some four or five of the deck passengers spoke to the captain about it. This was about breakfast time. Immediately after he left the deck, a number of the deck passengers rushed upon the negro, bound his arms behind his back and carried him forward to the bow of the boat. A voice cried out 'throw him overboard,' and was responded to from every quarter of the deck—and in an instant he was plunged into the river. The whole scene of tying him and throwing him overboard scarcely occupied ten minutes, and was so precipitate that the officers were unable to interfere in time to save him.

"There were between two hundred and fifty and three hundred passengers on board.'

"The whole process of seizing Tom, dragging him upon deck, binding his arms behind his back, forcing him to the bow of the boat, and throwing him overboard, occupied, the editor informs us, about TEN NUTES; and of the two hundred and fifty or three hundred deck pas

sengers, with perhaps as many

cabin passengers,

it does not appear

that a single individual raised a finger to prevent this deliberate murder; and the cry throw him overboard,' was, it seems, 'responded to from every quarter of the deck!'"

A bare enumeration of the various modes of torture known to be practised in the planting states, must convince the most incredulous, that our picture of slaveholding cruelty has not been overdrawn. In contemplating the following, it is difficult to resist the conviction, that a more profound and malicious cunning than belongs to mere man, has been employed in contriving such a diversity of hellish torments to plague mankind; at the same time we must confess that their invention displays no more of the fiend than their application which is daily made by beings wearing the form of men.

The slaves are suspended by the wrists, with their toes just touching the ground; their ankles having been tied, a heavy log or fence rail is thrust between their legs. In this situation, naked, they are flogged with a cow-hide* till their blood and bits of mangled flesh stream from their shoulders to the ground. Again, they are stretched at full length upon the earth, their faces downwards, each of their wrists and ankles is lashed to a stake driven firmly into the ground. Thus stretched so that they cannot shrink in the least from the descending blows, they receive sometimes hundreds of lashes on their naked backs. So protracted is the flogging frequently that the overseer stops in the midst of it to take breath and rest his tired muscles, only to resume it with increased violence. In such cases the back of the slave presents to the beholder one mass of clotted blood and mangled flesh. Sometimes instead of lashing the ankles and wrists to stakes, the overseer orders four strong slaves to hold the victim. The persons selected to do this are sometimes, through a refinement of cruelty, the relatives of the sufferer. Again the slaves are stripped and bound upon a log, and in this position they are tortured with heavy paddles bored full of

*This is a strip of a raw hide, cut the whole length of the ox, and twisted while in that state until it tapers off to a point; when it has become dry and hard it has somewhat the appearance of a drayman's whip, but the sharp edges projecting at every turn, cut into the flesh at every stroke; it is indeed a dreadful instrument of punishment.

K

holes, each of which raises a blister at every stroke: or infuriated cats are repeatedly dragged backwards from their shoulders to their hips. After either of the foregoing modes of lacerating the flesh, spirits of turpentine, or a solution of salt, or cayenne pepper, or pulverized mustard is rubbed into the bleeding wounds to aggravate and prolong the torment.

Sometimes the slaves are buried to their chins in holes dug in the damp ground, just large enough for them to stand erect with their arms close by their sides. They are also fastened in the stocks for several successive nights, being released during the day for work, or confined both night and day. Instead of stocks, the feet are sometimes thrust between the rails of the fence. The slaves are beaten with heavy clubs over the head, arms, shoulders, or legs. Walking canes are broken over their heads, sometimes fracturing the skull, or causing permanent insanity, or even death. In moments of passion the planter or overseer seizes any instrument within reach, often prostrating the slave at a blow; and then stamps upon him till his fury is spent. During these paroxysms of rage the slaves frequently suffer the most frightful mutilations and fractures. Their limbs are broken, joints dislocated, faces bruised, eyes and teeth knocked out, lips mangled, cheeks gashed, ears cropped, slit, or shaved close to the head, fingers and toes cut off; red hot branding irons with the initials of their masters are stamped into the cheeks, the fleshy parts of the thighs, and legs, and shoulders. They are maimed by gun and pistol shots, and lacerated with knives.

Again: they are handcuffed, manacled, loaded with chains and balls; iron yokes are fastened about their necks with long prongs extending outward and upward, or meeting above the head, where a bell is suspended.

They are punished by confinement in loathsome dungeons, by starvation, by nakedness, by protracted watchings, by long separation from their companions night and day,—as husband from wife, by being forced to flog the naked bodies of their own relatives, as sons their mothers, or fathers their own daughters. Woman in her most delicate condition is subjected to humiliation and suffering, by being driven, up to the day, and sometimes to the moment of her delivery to labor with the promiscuous gang, and to feel the overseers lash in case she lags behind.

‚—or

When runaways are discovered and attempt to flee they are fired upon, and maimed or killed. They are pursued by trained dogs, which worry them and tear their flesh, not unfrequently taking their lives. When retaken, though worn by their struggles and faint with the loss of blood, they are attached by a long rope to their master's saddle, and furiously dragged homeward, while an attendant, riding behind, plies the bloody lash. They often fall dead on the road in the midst of these forced marches.

TENTH QUESTION. What are the disabilities and disqualifications under which the people of colour labor?

In a subsequent part of this document a number of pages are devoted to the subject of "prejudice against colour," in which the outrages perpetrated, upon our coloured fellow citizens by a ferocious public sentiment are drawn out in detail. We will therefore in reply to this query merely refer you to a pamphlet recently published by the American Anti-Slavery Society "On the Condition of the free people of Colour in the United States." The Pamphlet will be forwarded herewith.

ELEVENTH QUESTION. How far are the professors of religion tacitly, or actively, implicated in the guilt of slaveholding, or any of its attendant evils?

The abolitionists of the United States have always insisted that professors of religion, both in the free and slave states, are deeply implicated in the guilt of slavery. They have been fully convinced that the American churches were mainly answerable for the continuance of American slavery, and it has been a prominent object with them to arouse professed Christians to testify, both in their individual and associated capacities, against the sin of oppression. The hostility which their efforts to this end have excited within the church, has more than justified their convictions-it has betrayed an extent and inveteracy of proslavery feeling in the professed church of Christ, of which even abolitionists had not conceived.

In making the developments which our query calls for, far be it from us to set aught down in censoriousness against the

professed followers of Jesus; and as far be it from our hearts to triumph in the exposure of their awful guilt touching the subject of slavery. Rather would we cover our faces in shame and weep at the thought, that professing Christians sanction and uphold such a system of outrages upon man and God.

We will first consider how far professors of religion, living in the slave states are implicated in the guilt of slaveholding, and subsequently exhibit the implication of professors in the free states. Professors of religion in the slave states are implicated very extensively as a body, in the guilt of slaveholding,

1. By holding slaves themselves.

2. By vying with non-professing masters, in cruel treatment of their slaves.

3. By selling and buying human beings, and often separating husbands and wives, parents and children.

4. By defending slavery as a "Bible Institution."

5. By denouncing, opposing, and reviling abolitionists.

1. By actually holding slaves. Professors of religion are slaveholders to as great an extent proportionably as the openly irreligious. There is no obstacle whatever to church members holding slaves. With the exception of the Friends or Quakers, the Reformed Presbyterians or Covenanters, and three other small sects-the United Brethren in Christ, the Primitive Methodists, and the Emancipation Baptists,*-there is not a single denomination in the slave states which forbids slaveholding among its members. So far from any obstacles being placed in the way, there is every encouragement held out to professed Christians to hold slaves. If any one should feel conscientious scruples about it, the example of his pastor and the church officers amply satisfies him that his misgivings are the result of weakness. Or if this should not perfectly convince him, a lecture or sermon from his minister, proving slavery a divine institution cannot fail to do so.

From the following testimony we learn to what extent professed Christians are engaged in actual slaveholding. The witness is a minister of high standing in the Presbyterian denomi

*Each of the four sects last named has not probably half a score of churches in all the slave states; and some of them we believe have only three or four churches.