The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus Part 192

"We have been among the slaves at the south. We took pains to make discoveries in respect to the evils of slavery. We formed our sentiments on the subject of the cruelties exercised towards the slaves from having witnessed them. We now affirm that we never saw a man, who had never been at the south, who thought as much of the cruelties practiced on the slaves, as we _know_ to be a fact.

"A slave whom I loved for his kindness and the amiableness of his disposition, and who belonged to the family where I resided, happened to stay out _fifteen minutes longer_ than he had permission to stay.

It was a mistake--it was _unintentional_. But what was the penalty? He was sent to the house of correction with the order that he should have _thirty lashes upon his naked body with a knotted rope!!!_ He was brought home and laid down in the stoop, in the back of the house, in _the sun, upon the floor_. And there he lay, with more the appearance of a rotten carca.s.s than a living man, for four days before he could do more than move. And who was this inhuman being calling G.o.d's property his own, and ruing it as he would not have dared to use a beast? You may say he was a tiger--one of the more wicked sort, and that we must not judge others by him. _He was a professor of that religion which will pour upon the willing slaveholder the retribution due to his sin_.

"We wish to mention another fact, which our own eyes saw and our own ears heard. We were called to evening prayers. The family a.s.sembled around the altar of their accustomed devotions. There was one female _slave_ present, who belonged to another master, but who had been hired for the day and tarried to attend family wors.h.i.+p. The precious Bible was opened, and nearly half a chapter had been read, when the eye of the master, who was reading, observed that the new female servant, instead of being seated like his own slaves, _flat upon the floor_, was standing in a stooping posture upon her feet. He told her to sit down on the floor. She said it was not her custom at home. He ordered her again to do it. She replied that her master did not require it. Irritated by this answer, he repeatedly _struck her upon the head with the very Bible he held in his hand_. And not content with this, he seized his cane and _caned her down stairs most unmercifully_. He then returned to resume his profane work, but we need not say that _all_ the family were not there. Do you ask again, who was this wicked man? _He was a professor of religion!!_"

Rev. HUNTINGTON LYMAN, late pastor of the Free Church in Buffalo, New York, says:--

"Walking one day in New Orleans with a professional gentleman, who was educated in Connecticut, we were met by a black man; the gentleman was greatly incensed with the black man for pa.s.sing so _near_ him, and turning upon him _he pushed him with violence off walk into the street_. This man was a professor of religion."

(And _we_ add, a member, and if we mistake not an officer of the Presbyterian Church which was established there by Rev. Joel Parker, and which was then under his teachings-ED.)

Mr. EZEKIEL BIRDSEYE, a gentleman of known probity, in Cornwall, Litchfield county, Conn. gives the testimony which follows:--

"A BAPTIST CLERGYMAN in Laurens District, S.C. WHIPPED HIS SLAVE TO DEATH, whom he _suspected_ of having stolen about sixty dollars. The slave was in the prime of life and was purchased a few weeks before for $800 of a slave trader from Virginia or Maryland. The coroner, Wm.

Irby, at whose house I was then boarding, _told me_, that on reviewing the dead body, he found it _beat to a jelly from head to foot_. The master's wife discovered the money a day or two after the death of the slave. She had herself removed it from where it was placed, not knowing what it was, as it was tied up in a thick envelope. I happened to be present when the trial of this man took place, at Laurens Court House. His daughter testified that her father untied the slave, when he appeared to be failing, and gave him cold water to drink, of which he took freely. His counsel pleaded that his death _might_ have been caused by drinking cold water in a state of excitement. The Judge charged the jury, that it would be their duty to find the defendant guilty, if they believed the death was caused by the whipping; but if they were of opinion that drinking cold water caused the death, they would find him not guilty! The jury found him--NOT GUILTY!"

Dr. JEREMIAH S. WAUGH, a physician in Somerville, Butler county, Ohio, testifies as follows:--

"In the year 1825, I boarded with the Rev. John Mushat, a Seceder minister, and princ.i.p.al of an academy in Iredel county, N.C. He had slaves, and was in the habit of restricting them on the Sabbath. One of his slaves, however, ventured to disobey his injunctions. The offence was he went away on Sabbath evening, and did not return till Monday morning. About the time we were called to breakfast, the Rev.

gentleman was engaged in chastising him for _breaking the Sabbath_. He determined not to submit--attempted to escape by flight. The master immediately took down his gun and pursued him--levelled his instrument of death, and told him, if he did not stop instantly _he would blow him through_. The poor slave returned to the house and submitted himself to the lash; and the good master, while YET PALE WITH RAGE, _sat down to the table, and with a trembling voice_ ASKED G.o.d'S BLESSING!"

The following letter was sent by Capt. JACOB DUNHAM, of New York city, to a slaveholder in Georgetown, D.C. more than twenty years since:

"Georgetown, June 13, 1815.

"Dear sir--Pa.s.sing your house yesterday, I beheld a scene of cruelty seldom witnessed--that was the brutal chastis.e.m.e.nt of your negro girl, _lashed to a ladder and beaten in an inhuman manner, too bad to describe_. My blood chills while I contemplate the subject. This has led me to investigate your character from your neighbors; who inform me that you have _caused the death_ of one negro man, whom you struck with a sledge for some trivial fault--that you have beaten another black girl with such severity that the _splinters_ remained in her back for some weeks after you sold her--and many other acts of barbarity, too lengthy to enumerate. And to my great surprise, I find you are a _professor of the Christian religion!_

"You will naturally inquire, why I meddle with your family affairs. My answer is, the cause of humanity and a sense of my duty requires it.--these hasty remarks I leave you to reflect on the subject; but wish you to remember, that there is an all-seeing eye who knows all our faults and will reward us according to our deeds.

I remain, sir, yours, &c

JACOB DUNHAM.

Master of the brig Cyrus, of N.Y."

Rev. SYLVESTER COWLES, pastor of the Presbyterian church in Fredonia, N.Y. says:--

"A young man, a member of the church in Conew.a.n.go, went to Alabama last year, to reside as a clerk in an uncle's store. When he had been there about nine months, he wrote his father that he must return home.

To see members of the same church sit at the communion table of our Lord one day, and the next to see one seize any weapon and knock the other down, _as he had seen_, he _could not_ live there. His good father forthwith gave him permission to return home."

The following is a specimen of the shameless hardihood with which a professed minister of the Gospel, and editor of a religious paper, a.s.sumes the right to hold G.o.d's image as a chattel. It is from the Southern Christian Herald:--

"It is stated in the Georgetown Union, that a negro, supposed to have died of cholera, when that disease prevailed in Charleston, was carried to the public burying ground to be interred; but before interment signs of life appeared, and, by the use of proper means, he was restored to health. And now the man who first perceived the signs of life in the slave, and that led to his preservation, claims the property as his own, and is about bringing suit for its recovery. As well might a man who rescued his neighbor's slave, or his _horse_, from drowning, or who extinguished the flames that would otherwise soon have burnt down his neighbor's house, claim the _property_ as his own."

Rev. GEORGE BOURNE, of New York city, late Editor of the "Protestant Vindicator," who was a preacher seven years in Virginia, gives the following testimony.[39]

"Benjamin Lewis, who was an elder in the Presbyterian church, engaged a carpenter to repair and enlarge his house. After some time had elapsed, Kyle, the builder, was awakened very early in the morning by a most piteous moaning and shrieking. He arose, and following the sound, discovered a colored woman nearly naked, tied to a fence, while Lewis was lacerating her. Kyle instantly commanded the slave driver to desist. Lewis maintained his jurisdiction over his slaves, and threatened Kyle that he would punish him for his interference.

Finally Kyle obtained the release of the victim.

"A second and a third scene of the same kind occurred, and on the third occasion the altercation almost produced a battle between the elder and the carpenter.

"Kyle immediately arranged his affairs, packed up his tools and prepared to depart. 'Where are you going?' demanded Lewis. 'I am going home;' said Kyle. 'Then I will pay you nothing for what you have done,' retorted the slave driver, 'unless you complete your contract.' The carpenter went away with this edifying declaration, 'I will not stay here a day longer; for I expect the fire of G.o.d will come down and burn you up altogether, and I do not choose to go to h.e.l.l with you.' Through hush-money and promises not to whip the women any more, I believe Kyle returned and completed his engagement.

"James Kyle of Harrisonburg, Virginia, frequently narrated that circ.u.mstance, and his son, the carpenter, confirmed it with all the minute particulars combined with his temporary residence on the Shenandoah river.

"John M'Cue of Augusta county, Virginia, a _Presbyterian preacher_, frequently on the Lord's day morning, tied up his slaves and whipped them; and left them bound, while he went to the meeting house and preached--and after his return home repeated his scourging. That fact, with others more heinous, was known to all persons in his congregation and around the vicinity; and so far from being censured for it, he and his brethren justified it as essential to preserve their 'domestic inst.i.tutions.'

"Mrs. Pence, of Rockingham county, Virginia, used to boast,--'I am the best hand to whip a _wench_ in the whole county.' She used to pinion the girls to a post in the yard on the Lord's day morning, scourge them, put on the '_negro plaster_,' salt, pepper, and vinegar, leave them tied, and walk away to church as demure as a nun, and after service repeat her flaying, if she felt the whim. I once expostulated with her upon her cruelly. 'Mrs. Pence, how can you whip your girls so publicly and disturb your neighbors so on the Lord's day morning.'

Her answer was memorable. 'If I were to whip them on any other day I should lose a day's work; but by whipping them on Sunday, their backs get well enough by Monday morning.' That woman, if alive, is doubtless a member of the church now, as then.

"Rev. Dr. Staughton, formerly of Philadelphia, often stated, that when he lived at Georgetown, S.C. he could tell the doings of one of the slaveholders of the Baptist church there by his prayers at the prayer meeting. 'If,' said he, 'that man was upon good terms with his slaves, his words were cold and heartless as frost; if he had been whipping a man, he would pray with life; but if he had left a woman whom he had been flogging, tied to a post in his cellar, with a determination to go back and torture her again, O! how he would pray!'

The Rev. Cyrus P. Grosvenor of Ma.s.sachusetts can confirm the above statement by Dr. Staughton.

"William Wilson, a Presbyterian preacher of Augusta county, Virginia, had a young colored girl who was const.i.tutionally unhealthy. As no means to amend her were availing, he sold her to a member of his congregation, and in the usual style of human flesh dealers, warranted her 'sound,' &c. The fraud was instantly discovered; but he would not refund the amount. A suit was commenced, and was long continued, and finally the plaintiff recovered the money out of which he had been swindled by slave-trading with his own preacher. No Presbytery censured him, although Judge Brown, the chancellor, severely condemned the imposition.

"In the year 1811, Johab Graham, a preacher, lived with Alexander Nelson a Presbyterian elder, near Stanton, Virginia, and he informed me that a man had appeared before Nelson, who was a magistrate, and swore falsely against his slave,--that the elder ordered him thirty-nine lashes. All that wickedness was done as an excuse for his dissipated owner to obtain money. A negro trader had offered him a considerable sum for the 'boy,' and under the pretence of saving him from the punishment of the law, he was trafficked away from his woman and children to another state. The magistrate was aware of the perjury, and the whole abomination, but all the truth uttered by every colored person in the southern states would not be of any avail against the notorious false swearing of the greatest white villain who ever cursed the world. 'How,' said Johab Graham, can I preach to-morrow?' I replied, 'Very well; go and thunder the doctrine of retribution in their ears, Obadiah 15, till by the divine blessing you kill or cure them. My friends, John M. Nelson of Hillsborough, Ohio, Samuel Linn, and Robert Herron, and others of the same vicinity, could 'make both the ears of every one who heareth them tingle' with the accounts which they can give of slave-driving by professors of religion in the Shenandoah Valley, Virginia.

"In 1815, near Frederick, in Maryland, a most barbarous planter was killed in a fit of desperation, by four of his slaves _in self-defence_. It was declared by those slaves while in prison that, besides his atrocities among their female a.s.sociates, he had deliberately butchered a number of his slaves. The four men were murdered by law, to appease the popular clamor. I saw them executed on the twenty-eighth day of Jan'y, 1816. The facts I received from the Rev. Patrick Davidson of Frederick, who constantly visited them during their imprisonment--and who became an abolitionist in consequence of the disclosures which he heard from those men in the jail. The name of the planter is not distinctly recollected, but it can be known by a inspection of the record of the trial in the clerk's office, Frederick.

"A minister of Virginia, still living, and whose name must not be mentioned for fear of Nero Preston and his confederate-hanging myrmidons, informed me of this fact in 1815, in his own house. 'A member of my church, said he, lately whipped a colored youth to death.

What shall I do?' I answered, 'I hope you do not mean to continue him in your church.' That minister replied, 'How can we help it'

We dare not call him to an account. We have no legal testimony.'

Their communion season was then approaching. I addressed his wife,--'Mrs. ---- do you mean to sit at the Lord's table with that murderer?'--,'Not I,' she answered: 'I would as soon commune with the devil himself.' The slave killer was equally unnoticed by the civil and ecclesiastical authority.

"John Baxter, a Presbyterian elder, the brother of that slaveholding doctor in divinity, George A. Baxter, held as a slave the wife of a Baptist colored preacher, familiarly called 'Uncle Jack.' In a late period of pregnancy he scourged her so that the lives of herself and her unborn child were considered in jeopardy. Uncle Jack was advised to obtain the liberation of his wife. Baxter finally agreed, I think, to sell the woman and her children, three of them, I believe for six hundred dollars, and an additional hundred if the unborn child survived a certain period after its birth. Uncle Jack was to pay one hundred dollars per annum for his wife and children for seven years, and Baxter held a sort of mortgage upon them for the payment. Uncle Jack showed me his back in furrows like a ploughed field. His master used to whip up the flesh, then beat it downwards, and then apply the 'negro plaster,' salt, pepper, mustard, and vinegar, until all Jack's back was almost as hard and unimpressible as the bones. There is slaveholding religion! A Presbyterian elder receiving from a Baptist preacher seven hundred dollars for his wife and children. James Kyle and uncle Jack used to tell that story with great Christian sensibility; and uncle Jack would weep tears of anguish over his wife's piteous tale, and tears of ecstasy at the same moment that he was free, and that soon, by the grace of G.o.d, his wife and children, as he said, 'would be all free together.'"

Rev. JAMES NOURSE, a Presbyterian clergyman of Mifflia co. Penn., whose father is, we believe, a slaveholder in Was.h.i.+ngton City, says,--

"The Rev. Mr. M----, now of the Huntingdon Presbytery, after an absence of many months, was about visiting his old friends on what is commonly called the 'Eastern Sh.o.r.e.' Late in the afternoon, on his journey, he called at the house of Rev. A.C. of P----town, Md. With this brother he had been long acquainted. Just at that juncture Mr. C. was about proceeding to whip a colored female, who was his slave. She was firmly tied to a post in FRONT of his dwelling-house. The arrival of a clerical visitor at such a time, occasioned a temporary delay in the execution of Mr. C's purpose. But the delay was only temporary; for not even the presence of such a guest could destroy the b.l.o.o.d.y design.

The guest interceded with all the mildness yet earnestness of a brother and new visitor. But all in vain, 'the woman had been saucy and must be punished.' The cowhide was accordingly produced, and the _Rev. Mr. C_., a large and very stout man, applied it 'manfully' on 'woman's' bare and 'shrinking flesh.' I say bare, because you know that the slave women generally have but three or four inches of the arm near the shoulder covered, and the neck is left entirely exposed.

As the cowhide moved back and forward, striking right and left, on the head, neck and arms, at every few strokes the sympathizing guest would exclaim, 'O, brother C. desist' But brother C. pursued his brutal work, till, after inflicting about sixty lashes, the woman was found to be suffused with blood on the hinder part of her neck, and under her frock between the shoulders. Yet this Rev. gentleman is well esteemed in the church--was, three or four years since, moderator of the synod of Philadelphia, and yet walks abroad, feeling himself unrebuked by law or gospel. Ah, sir does not this narration give fearful force to the query--_What has the church to do with slavery_?'

Comment on the facts is unnecessary, yet allow me to conclude by saying, that it is my opinion such occurrences _are not rare in the south_.

J.N."

REV. CHARLES STEWART RENSHAW, of Quincy, Illinois, in a recent letter, speaking of his residence, for a period, in Kentucky, says--

"In a conversation with Mr. Robert Willis, he told me that his negro girl had run away from him some time previous. He was convinced that she was lurking round, and he watched for her. He soon found the place of her concealment, drew her from it, got a rope, and tied her hands across each other, then threw the rope over a beam in the kitchen, and hoisted her up by the wrists; 'and,' said he, 'I whipped her there till I made the lint fly, I tell you.' I asked him the meaning of making 'the lint fly,' and he replied, '_till the blood flew_.' I spoke of the iniquity and cruelty of slavery, and of its immediate abandonment. He confessed it an evil, but said, 'I am a _colonizationist_--I believe in that scheme.' Mr. Willis is a teacher of sacred music, and a member of the Presbyterian Church in Lexington, Kentucky."

Mr. R. speaking of the PRESBYTERIAN MINISTER and church where he resided, says:

"The minister and all the church members held slaves. Some were treated kindly, others harshly. _There was not a shade of difference_ between their slaves and those of their _infidel_ neighbors, either in their physical, intellectual, or moral state: in some cases they would _suffer_ in the comparison.