to satisfy myself by ocular testimony; when, alas! I discovered that all I had heard was too fatally true; for, shocking to relate, I found the wretched and almost murdered woman lying stark naked on her belly upon the dirty boards, without any covering to the horrid wounds which had been cut by the whips, with the still warm and bloody corpse of the man extended at her side, upon the neck of which was an iron collar, and a long heavy chain, which the now murdered negro had been made to wear from the time of his return to the estate.

The flesh of the woman was so torn as to exhibit one extensive sore from the loins almost down to her hams; nor had humanity administered even a drop of oil to soften her wounds. The only relief she knew was that of extending her feeble arm in order to beat off the tormenting flies with a small green bough, which had been put into her hand for that purpose by the sympathizing kindness of a fellow-slave. A more shocking or distressing spectacle can scarcely be conceived. The dead man, and the almost expiring woman, had been brought home from the place of punishment, and thrown into the negro hospital, amidst the crowd of sick, with cruel unconcern. Lying on the opposite side of the corpse was a fellowsufferer in similar condition to the poor woman. His buttocks, thighs, and part of his back, had been flogged into one large sore, which was still raw, although he had been punished a fortnight before.

A few days after the funeral, the attorney of the estate happened to call at Lancaster, to visit the officers; and the conversation natusally turning upon the cruelty of the manager, and the consequent injury derived to the proprietors, we asked him what punishment the

laws of the colony had provided for such horrid and barbarous crimes; expressing our hope that the manager would suffer the disgrace he so justly merited; when, to our great surprise, the attorney smiled, and treated our remarks only as the dreams of men unpractised in the ways of slavery. He spoke of the murder with as little feeling as the manager who had perpetrated it, and seemed to be amused at our visionary ideas of punishing a white man for his cruel treatment of slaves.

To the question, whether the manager would not be dismissed from the estate? he replied, " Certainly not;" adding, "that if the negro had been treated as he deserved, he would have been flogged to death long before." Such was the amount of his sympathy and concern! "The laws of the country," he said, "were intended to punish any person for punishing a slave with more than thirty-nine lashes for the same offence; but by incuraing only a small fine he could at auy time punish a negro with as many hundred lashes as he might wish, although the governor and the fiscal were standing at his elbow."

That the slaves universally believe in transmigration to Africa after their decease, and that this renders them often desirous to terminate their miseries by suicide, which masters have the greatest difficulty in preventing, are statements pointedly made by Dr. Pinckard. But his account of two negro funerals, which he witnessed himself, are still more striking, as evidence of the humanity of planters, and the happiness of their slaves. At both these solemnities the most unbounded marks of joy, and, as it were, congratulation, formed the rude ceremonial. The corpse of the happy negro, now rescued from

his chains by a Power against which not even white men could contend, was followed by his surviving comrades, singing and capering for joy; not asking him, like the barbarians of the polar circles, why he died, or lamenting that he had left them, but addressing him in exclamations of envy; of hope that they should speedily follow him, and of confidence that the moment of their death would prove also the signal of relief from their miserable

state.

Great wretchedness is occasioned at slave sales, by the separation of their friends and relatives. This dreadful and inherent feature of the traffic has not, perhaps, been sufficiently attended to. The following description of a mother who was exhibited at a sale, with her son and three daughters, furnishes an instance :

The fears of the parent, lest she should be separated from her children, or these from each other, were anxious and watchful, beyond all that imagination could paint, or the Dost vivid fancy portray. When any one approached their little group, or advanced to look towards them with the attentive eye of a purchaser, the children, in broken sobs, crouched nearer together, and the fearful mother, in agonizing impulse, instantly fell down before the spectator, bowed herself to the earth, and kissed his feet; then alternately clinging to his legs, and pressing her children to her bosom, she fixed herself upon her knees, clasped her hands together, and in anguish cast up a look of humble petition, which might have found its way even to the heart of a Caligula; and thus, in Nature's truest language, did the afflicted parent urge the strongest appeal to his compassion, while she implored the purchaser, in dealing out to her

the hard lot of slavery, to spare her the additional pang of being torn from her children.'

Though Dr. Pinckard was always well received by the planters-lived in their society on a footing of the closest intimacy-was a witness of all the good, as well as the evil, of their manners-and was, in every respect, most naturally and properly inclined to vindicate them, where truth will permit; yet his whole volumes, abounding in every species of information, containing all the results of his attentive unwearied observations on the state of the slaves, as well as of the colonies in general, do not offer to the most attentive perusal one single fact or circumstance approaching to a defence of the evil so often imputed to the slave trade. Their whole compass offers not a line to contradict, nor even in any degree to weaken, the mass of evidence upon which former writers on colonial affairs have long denounced that detestable enormity. On the contrary, he furnishes, almost in every page, new examples of its evils, and new grounds for its abolition.

It is a humiliating and melancholy fact, that the more despotic the government the happier the slave. We never hear of the magistrates of Rome interfering to protect the defenceless children of sorrow until the times of the emperors, when one of them ordered an imperious master to be punished, and his slaves to be liberated. In free states the limited authority of magistrates prevents them from interfering in individual concerns; and it frequently happens that the slaveowners are also magistrates. Under despotisms this is not always the case. Human feelings are not there controlled by laws, and the cruel master cannot escape the laudable indignation which his conduct ex

cites when the executive punishes in accordance with the feelings of the moment, and not by the directions of legislative statutes, previously enacted. For these reasons we find the slaves in the French and Spanish colonies much better treated than in our own. There are one or two exceptions; but, generally speaking, this is the case; and we blush for our country while we acknowledge the fact. As a further proof of our remarks, we shall exhibit the state of slavery in Republican America, and see whether tyranny ever inflicted greater tortures than take place in that land of freedom.

Mr. John Parrish, an Americanborn citizen, and an enlightened Quaker, in a pamphlet published in Philadelphia, 1806, by Kimber, Conrad, and Co. says:

There is a species of slave-trade carried on in the United States, which in cruelty equals that in the West Indies. A class of men, whose minds seem to have become almost callous to every tender feeling, have agents in various places suited to their purpose, who travel through different states, and by purchase, or otherwise, procure considerable numbers of these people, which consequently occasions a separation of the nearest connexions in life. Husbands from wives, and parents from children the poignant sensations marked on their mournful countenances disregarded-are taken in droves through the country like herds of cattle, but with less commiseration; for, being chained, or otherwise fettered, the weight and friction of their shackles naturally producing much soreness and pain, they are greatly incommoded in their travel. Gaols, designed for the security of such as have forfeited their liberty by a breach of the laws, are, through the countenance of some

of the magistracy, made receptacles for this kind of merchandise; and, when opportunity presents for moving them further, it is generally in the dead of night, that their cries migh not be heard, nor legal methods pursued for the liberation of such as have been kidnapped. Others are chained in the garrets or cellars of private houses, till the numbers becoming nearly equal to the success which may have been expected, they are then conveyed on board, and crowded under the hatches of vessels secretly stationed for that purpose, and thus transported to Petersburg, in Virginia, or such other parts as will insure the best market; and many are marched by land to unknown destined places.

Is it not a melancholy eircumstance that such an abominable trade should be suffered in a land boasting of liberty ?-While I was waiting with others on the legislature of Maryland, at their session in 1803, it was well known that a vessel lay in the river below Baltimore, to take in slaves-a practice frequent on the waters of Maryland, Delaware, and many other places.

'The evidence of a free African will not be taken against a white man; and, therefore, he may go unpunished.

Many of the people of colour, who had fled to prevent their being sold to southern traders, have, by authority of the fugitive law, been pursued, brought back, and sold to men of this description; and, as government has refused to afford them any redress, to God only could they look for support. Thus this law is put in force against an unoffending helpless people, while of the fugitive for murder or theft little or no notice is taken; so that the true spirit of judgment is turned backward.

In some places, cognizance s

taken of murder, long after the perpetration. In Great Britain, the Governor of Goree, in Africa, for ordering a soldier to be illegally whipped, which occasioned his death, was tried and executed fifteen or twenty years afterwards.* How have the coloured people's lives been sported with in some parts of the United States! Numbers have been whipped to death, and other wise murdered, and little or no notice taken, in a judicial capacity. It was reported, from good authority, that a black man who was sold from near Snow Hill, in Maryland, to a distant part of the Continent, returned back, and lay out of doors. Being accused of stealing from his neighbours, he was pursued, taken, and brought into the village one morning, and there hung without judge or jury; of which no more notice was taken than if they hung a dog!

It was a just observation of Thomas Jefferson (late President of the United States)," that the whole commerce between master and slave is one perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions on the one part, and degrading submission on the other." Many instances have occurred, and some of a recent date, where the slaves have rather chosen death, than to remain in a state of bondage, liable to be separated from all that is dear to them. Some have plunged into the water, and drowned themselves; others have cut their throats-one in particular, lately in Delaware county gaol, and another on the pavement in Philadelphia, finding they were about to

be sent from their relatives to the West Indies. Others, in attempting to make their escape, have resorted to desperate means for accomplishing it. A number of these unhappy people were taken from the eastern shore of Maryland, by two of the southern slave-traders, called Georgiamen-by name Henry Spiers and Joshua Butts, who being concerned with the treasurer of the state of Georgia, were furnished by him with eight or ten thousand dollars out of the treasury, to speculate on; but as they were returning with their purchases through Virginia, they were exterminated by their prisoners; who were afterwards apprehended, and several of them executed.

When I was travelling through North Carolina, a black man, who was outlawed, being shot by one of his pursuers, and left wounded in the woods, they came to the ordinary where I had stopped to bait my horse, in order to procure a cart to bring the poor wretched object in. Another, I was credibly informed, was shot, his head cut off, and carried in a bag by the perpetrators of the murder, who received the reward,t which was said to have been two hundred dollars, and that the head was stuck on a coal-house at an iron-works in Virginia. His crime was going, without leave, to visit his wife, who was in slavery at some distance. One Crawford gives an account of a black man being gibbetted alive in South Carolina, and the buzzards came and picked out his eyes. Another was burnt at the stake in Charlestown,

in the same state, surrounded by a multitude of spectators, some of whom were people of the first rank. The poor object was heard to cry "Not guilty! not guilty!"

A judge on the eastern shore of Maryland sold thirteen of his slaves to a southern trader, among whom was a man who was sent to gather oysters, while his wife was taken away: when he returned, and found his wife was gone, he expostulated with his learned master, asking "Whether he had not been a faithful slave for more than twenty years, and requesting he might go after his wife:" but this boon of mercy was refused. A man by the name of Black, in Cedar Creek Neck, the latter end of April, 1805, in the state of Delaware and county of Sussex, suspended a black lad; and, tying three fence-rails to his feet, beat him to death, and then buried the body in the night. On discovery of the fact, the corpse was taken up, and, by the coroner's inquest, he was found guilty of wilful murder. It further appeared that Black had been the death of two unhappy victims before, which was kept secret. What made the former murder more lamentable was, the lad was innocent of the crime he was charged with, viz. taking leather for a pair of shoe soles, which Black's son afterwards acknowledged he had taken. The murderer escaped justice.

From an account, published in the "American Daily Advertiser," by a person who had taken a tour along the eastern shore of Maryland, it appears that from that side of the bay only there were not less

than six hundred blacks carried off in six months by the Georgiamen, or southern traders. Some of the agents of those southern traders are so

hardy as to publish advertisements of their readiness to purchase these kinds of cargo, which they effect in various ways; frequently by purchases made so secretly, that the poor blacks, when engaged at their meals, or occupied in some domestic concerns, not having the least intimation of the design, are suddenly seized, bound, and carried off, either to some place provided for the purpose, or immediately on board the vessel. Many are obtained by kidnapping, until the whole supply is completed.

I have heard some men in eminent stations say, "the country must be thinned of these people (the blacks)-they must be got rid of at any rate." Some from embarrassed circumstances have made sale of these wretched objects, who, being fallen upon unawares, were handcuffed, and sent afar off, which has struck such a terror to other slaves, who would otherwise have remained with their masters, that they have run away. A man and his wife on the same shore of Maryland, being thus circumstanced, fled under such alarm, that the woman left behind her sucking child.† After they were taken, I met them, coupled together in irons, and drove along the road like brute beasts, by two rough unfeeling white men. About sixty in one drove of these poor men, women, and children, were lately driven through Pennsy!vania; and not only the males, but the women, were so iron-bound, that