Before presenting to the reader particular details of the cruelties inflicted upon American slaves, we will present in brief the well-weighed declarations of slaveholders and other residents of slave states, testifying that the slaves are treated with barbarous inhumanity. All details and particulars will be drawn out under their appropriate heads. We propose in this place to present testimony of a general character—the solemn declarations of slaveholders and others, that the slaves are treated with great cruelty.

To discredit the testimony of witnesses who insist upon convicting themselves, would be an anomalous scepticism.

To show that American slavery has always had one uniform character of diabolical cruelty, we will go back one hundred years, and prove it by unimpeachable witnesses, who have given their deliberate testimony to its horrid barbarity, from 1739 to 1839.

In a letter written by him in Georgia, and addressed to the slaveholders of Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina and Georgia, in 1739.—See Benezet's "Caution to Great Britain and her Colonies."

"As I lately passed through your provinces on my way hither, I was sensibly touched with a fellow-feeling of the miseries of the poor negroes.

"Sure I am, it is sinful to use them as bad, nay worse than if they were brutes; and whatever particular exceptions there may be, (as I would charitably hope there are some,) I fear the generality of you that own negroes are liable to such a charge. Not to mention what numbers have been given up to the inhuman usage of cruel taskmasters, who by their unrelenting scourges, have ploughed their backs and made long furrows, and at length brought them to the grave!

"The blood of them, spilt for these many years, in your respective provinces, will ascend up to heaven against you!" The following is the testimony of the celebrated JOHN WOOLMAN, an eminent minister of the Society of Friends, who traveled extensively in the slave state. We copy it from a "Memoir of JOHN WOOLMAN, chiefly extracted from a Journal of his Life and Travels." It was published in Philadelphia, by the "Society of Friends."

"The following reflections, were written in 1757, while he was traveling on a religious account among slaveholders."

"Many of the white people in these provinces, take little or no care of negro marriages; and when negroes marry, after their own way, some make so little account of those marriages, that, with views of outward interest, they often part men from their wives, by selling them far asunder; which is common when estates are sold by executors at vendue.

"Many whose labor is heavy, being followed at their business in the field by a man with a whip, hired for that purpose,—have, in common, little else allowed them but one peck of Indian corn and some salt for one week, with a few potatoes. (The potatoes they commonly raise by their labor on the first day of the week.) The correction ensuing on their disobedience to overseers, or slothfulness in business, is often very severe, and sometimes desperate. Men and women have many times scarce clothes enough to hide their nakedness—and boys and girls, ten and twelve years old, are often quite naked among their masters' children. Some use endeavors to instruct those (negro children) they have in reading; but in common, this is not only neglected, but disapproved."—p. 12.

"In the ordinary course of the business of the country, the punishment of relations frequently happens on the same farm, and in view of each other: the father often sees his beloved son—the son his venerable sire—the mother her much loved daughter—the daughter her affectionate parent—the husband sees the wife of his bosom, and she the husband of her affection, cruelly bound up without delicacy or mercy, and without daring to interpose in each other's behalf, and punished with all the extremity of incensed rage, and all the rigor of unrelenting severity. Let us reverse the case, and suppose it ours: ALL IS SILENT HORROR!"

In a speech before the Maryland House of Delegates, in 1789, Mr. P. calls slavery in that state, "a speaking picture of abominable oppression;" and adds: "It will not do thus to ... act like unrelenting tyrants, perpetually sermonizing it with liberty as our text, and actual oppression for our commentary. Is she [Maryland] not ... the foster mother of petty despots,—the patron of wanton oppression?"

Extract from a speech of Mr. RICE, in the Convention for forming the Constitution of Kentucky, in 1790:

"The master may, and often does, inflict upon him all the severity of punishment the human body is capable of bearing."

President Edwards, the Younger, in a sermon before the Connecticut Abolition Society, 1791, says:

"From these drivers, for every imagined, as well as real neglect or want of exertion, they receive the lash—the smack of which is all day long in the ears of those who are on the plantation or in the vicinity; and it is used with such dexterity and severity, as not only to lacerate the skin, but to tear out small portions of the flesh at almost every stroke.

"This is the general treatment of the slaves. But many individuals suffer still more severely. Many, many are knocked down; some have their eyes beaten out: some have an arm or a leg broken, or chopped off; and many, for a very small, or for no crime at all, have been beaten to death, merely to gratify the fury of an enraged master or overseer."

Extract from an oration, delivered at Baltimore, July 4, 1797, by GEORGE BUCHANAN, M.D., member of the American Philosophical Society.

Their situation (the slaves') is insupportable; misery inhabits their cabins, and pursues them in the field. Inhumanly beaten, they often fall sacrifices to the turbulent tempers of their masters! Who is there, unless inured to savage cruelties, that can hear of the inhuman punishments daily inflicted upon the unfortunate blacks, without feeling for them? Can a man who calls himself a Christian, coolly and deliberately tie up, thumb-screw, torture with pincers, and beat unmercifully a poor slave, for perhaps a trifling neglect of duty?—p. 14.

TESTIMONY OF HON. JOHN RANDOLPH, OF ROANOKE—A SLAVEHOLDER.

In one of his Congressional speeches, Mr. R. says: "Avarice alone can drive, as it does drive, this infernal traffic, and the wretched victims of it, like so many post-horses whipped to death in a mail coach. Ambition has its cover-sluts in the pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war; but where are the trophies of avarice? The hand-cuff; the manacle, the blood-stained cowhide!"

MAJOR STODDARD, of the United States' army, who took possession of Louisiana in behalf of the United States, under the cession of 1804, in his Sketches of Louisiana, page 332, says:

"The feelings of humanity are outraged—the most odious tyranny exercised in a land of freedom, and hunger and nakedness prevail amidst plenty.***Cruel, and even unusual punishments are daily inflicted on these wretched creatures, enfeebled with hunger, labor and the lash. The scenes of misery and distress constantly witnessed along the coast of the Delta, [of the Mississippi,] the wounds and lacerations occasioned by demoralized masters and overseers, torture the feelings of the passing stranger, and wring blood from the heart."

Though only the third of the following series of resolutions is directly relevant to the subject now under consideration, we insert the other resolutions, both because they are explanatory of the third, and also serve to reveal the public sentiment of Indiana, at the date of the resolutions. As a large majority of the citizens of Indiana at that time, were natives of slave states, they well knew the actual condition of the slaves.

1. "RESOLVED UNANIMOUSLY, by the Legislative Council and House of Representatives of Indiana Territory, that a suspension of the sixth article of compact between the United States and the territories and states north west of the river Ohio, passed the 13th day of January, 1783, for the term of ten years, would be highly advantageous to the territory, and meet the approbation of at least nine-tenths of the good citizens of the same."

2. "RESOLVED UNANIMOUSLY, that the abstract question of liberty and slavery, is not considered as involved in a suspension of the said article, inasmuch as the number of slaves in the United States would not be augmented by the measure."

3. "RESOLVED UNANIMOUSLY, that the suspension of the said article would be equally advantageous to the territory, to the states from whence the negroes would be brought, and to the negroes themselves. The states which are overburthened with negroes which they cannot comfortably support;**and THE NEGRO HIMSELF WOULD EXCHANGE A SCANTY PITTANCE OF THE COARSEST FOOD, for a plentiful and nourishing diet; and a situation which admits not the most distant prospect of emancipation, for one which presents no considerable obstacle to his wishes."

4. "RESOLVED UNANIMOUSLY, that a copy of these resolutions be delivered to the delegate to Congress from this territory, and that he be, and he hereby is, instructed to use his best endeavors to obtain a suspension of the said article."

J.B. THOMAS, Speaker of the House of Representatives.

PIERRE MINARD, President pro tem. of the Legislative Council. Vincennes, Dec. 20, 1806.

"Forwarded to the Speaker the United States' Senate, by WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON, Governor"—American State Papers vol 1. p. 467.

MONSIEUR C.C. ROBIN, who resided in Louisiana from 1802 to 1806, and published a volume containing the results of his observations there, thus speaks of the condition of the slaves:

"While they are at labor, the manager, the master, or the driver has commonly the whip in hand to strike the idle. But those of the negroes who are judged guilty of serious faults, are punished twenty, twenty-five, forty, fifty, or one hundred lashes. The manner of this cruel execution is as follows: four stakes are driven down, making a long square; the culprit is extended naked between these stakes, face downwards; his hands and his feet are bound separately, with strong cords, to each of the stakes, so far apart that his arms and legs, stretched in the form of St. Andrew's cross, give the poor wretch no chance of stirring. Then the executioner, who is ordinarily a negro, armed with the long whip of a coachman, strikes upon the reins and thighs. The crack of his whip resounds afar, like that of an angry cartman beating his horses. The blood flows, the long wounds cross each other, strips of skin are raised without softening either the hand of the executioner or the heart of the master, who cries 'sting him harder.'

"The reader is moved; so am I: my agitated hand refuses to trace the bloody picture, to recount how many times the piercing cry of pain has interrupted my silent occupations; how many times I have shuddered at the faces of those barbarous masters, where I saw inscribed the number of victims sacrificed to their ferocity.

"The women are subjected to these punishments as rigorously as the men—not even pregnancy exempts them; in that case, before binding them to the stakes, a hole is made in the ground to accommodate the enlarged form of the victim.

"It is remarkable that the white creole women are ordinarily more inexorable than the men. Their slow and languid gait, and the trifling services which they impose, betoken only apathetic indolence; but should the slave not promptly obey, should he even fail to divine the meaning of their gestures, or looks, in an instant they are armed with a formidable whip; it is no longer the arm which cannot sustain the weight of a shawl or a reticule—it is no longer the form which but feebly sustains itself. They themselves order the punishment of one of these poor creatures, and with a dry eye see their victim bound to four stakes; they count the blows, and raise a voice of menace, if the arm that strikes relaxes, or if the blood does not flow in sufficient abundance. Their sensibility changed to fury must needs feed itself for a while on the hideous spectacle; they must, as if to revive themselves, hear the piercing shrieks, and see the flow of fresh blood; there are some of them who, in their frantic rage, pinch and bite their victims.

"It is by no means wonderful that the laws designed to protect the slave, should be little respected by the generality of such masters. I have seen some masters pay those unfortunate people the miserable overcoat which is their due; but others give them nothing at all, and do not even leave them the hours and Sundays granted to them by law. I have seen some of those barbarous masters leave them, during the winter, in a state of revolting nudity, even contrary to their own true interests, for they thus weaken and shorten the lives upon which repose the whole of their own fortunes. I have seen some of those negroes obliged to conceal their nakedness with the long moss of the country. The sad melancholy of these wretches, depicted upon their countenances, the flight of some, and the death of others, do not reclaim their masters; they wreak upon those who remain, the vengeance which they can no longer exercise upon the others."

WHITMAN MEAD, Esq. of New York, in his journal, published nearly a quarter of a century ago, under date of

"SAVANNAH, January 28, 1817.

"To one not accustomed to such scenes as slavery presents, the condition of the slaves is impressively shocking. In the course of my walks, I was every where witness to their wretchedness. Like the brute creatures of the north, they are driven about at the pleasure of all who meet them: half naked and half starved, they drag out a pitiful existence, apparently almost unconscious of what they suffer. A threat accompanies every command, and a bastinado is the usual reward of disobedience."

A native of Tennessee, educated there, and for a number of years a preacher in slave states—now pastor of a church in Ripley, Ohio.

"Many poor slaves are stripped naked, stretched and tied across barrels, or large bags, and tortured with the lash during hours, and even whole days, until their flesh is mangled to the very bones. Others are stripped and hung up by the arms, their feet are tied together, and the end of a heavy piece of timber is put between their legs in order to stretch their bodies, and so prepare them for the torturing lash—and in this situation they are often whipped until their bodies are covered with blood and mangled flesh—and in order to add the greatest keenness to their sufferings, their wounds are washed with liquid salt! And some of the miserable creatures are permitted to hang in that position until they actually expire; some die under the lash, others linger about for a time, and at length die of their wounds, and many survive, and endure again similar torture. These bloody scenes are constantly exhibiting in every slave holding country—thousands of whips are every day stained in African blood! Even the poor females are not permitted to escape these shocking cruelties."—Rankin's Letters.

These letters were published fifteen years ago.—They were addressed to a brother in Virginia, who was a slaveholder.

"We have heard of slavery as it exists in Asia, and Africa, and Turkey—we have heard of the feudal slavery under which the peasantry of Europe have groaned from the days of Alaric until now, but excepting only the horrible system of the West India Islands, we have never heard of slavery in any country, ancient or modern, Pagan, Mohammedan, or Christian! so terrible in its character, as the slavery which exists in these United States."—Seventh Report American Colonization Society, 1824.

Signed by Moses Swain, President, and William Swain, Secretary.

"In the eastern part of the state, the slaves considerably outnumber the free population. Their situation is there wretched beyond description. Impoverished by the mismanagement which we have already attempted to describe, the master, unable to support his own grandeur and maintain his slaves, puts the unfortunate wretches upon short allowances, scarcely sufficient for their sustenance, so that a great part of them go half naked and half starved much of the time. Generally, throughout the state, the African is an abused, a monstrously outraged creature."—See Minutes of the American Convention, convened in Baltimore, Oct. 25, 1826.

FROM NILES' BALTIMORE REGISTER FOR 1829, VOL 35, p. 4.

"Dealing in slaves has become a large business. Establishments are made at several places in Maryland and Virginia, at which they are sold like cattle. These places of deposit are strongly built, and well supplied with iron thumb-screws and gags, and ornamented with catskins and other whips—often times bloody."

Judge RUFFIN, of the Supreme Court of North Carolina, in one of his judicial decisions, says—"The slave, to remain a slave, must feel that there is NO APPEAL FROM HIS MASTER. No man can anticipate the provocations which the slave would give, nor the consequent wrath of the master, prompting him to BLOODY VENGEANCE on the turbulent traitor, a vengeance generally practiced with impunity, by reason of its PRIVACY."—See Wheeler's Law of Slavery p. 247.

MR. MOORE, of VIRGINIA, in his speech before the Legislature of that state, Jan. 15, 1832, says: "It must be confessed, that although the treatment of our slaves is in the general, as mild and humane as it can be, that it must always happen, that there will be found hundreds of individuals, who, owing either to the natural ferocity of their dispositions, or to the effects of intemperance, will be guilty of cruelty and barbarity towards their slaves, which is almost intolerable, and at which humanity revolts."

"Let any man of spirit and feeling, for a moment cast his thoughts over this land of slave—think of the nakedness of some, the hungry yearnings of others, the flowing tears and heaving sighs of parting relations, the wailings and wo, the bloody cut of the keen lash, and the frightful scream that rends the very skies—and all this to gratify ambition, lust, pride, avarice, vanity, and other depraved feelings of the human heart.... THE WORST IS NOT GENERALLY KNOWN. Were all the miseries, the horrors of slavery, to burst at once into view, a peal of seven-fold thunder could scarce strike greater alarm."—See "Swain's Address," 1830.

Son of Dr. Finley, one of the founders of the Colonization Society, and brother of R.S. Finley, agent of the American Colonization Society. Dr. J.C. Finley was formerly one of the editors of the Western Medical Journal, at Cincinnati, and is well known in the west as utterly hostile to immediate abolition.

"In almost the last conversation I had with you before I left Cincinnati, I promised to give you some account of some scenes of atrocious cruelty towards slaves, which I witnessed while I lived at the south. I almost regret having made the promise, for not only are they so atrocious that you will with difficulty believe them, but I also fear that they will have the effect of driving you into that abolitionism, upon the borders of which you have been so long hesitating. The people of the north are ignorant of the horrors of slavery—of the atrocities which it commits upon the unprotected slave.***

"I do not know that any thing could be gained by particularizing the scenes of horrible barbarity, which fell under my observation during my short residence in one of the wealthiest, most intelligent, and most moral parts of Georgia. Their number and atrocity are such, that I am confident they would gain credit with none but abolitionists. Every thing will be conveyed in the remark, that in a state of society calculated to foster the worst passions of our nature, the slave derives no protection either from law or public opinion, and that ALL the cruelties which the Russians are reported to have acted towards the Poles, after their late subjugation, ARE SCENES OF EVERY-DAY OCCURRENCE in the southern states. This statement, incredible as it may seem, falls short, very far short of the truth."

The foregoing is extracted from a letter written by Dr. Finley to Rev. Asa Mahan, his former pastor, then of Cincinnati, now President of Oberlin Seminary.

TESTIMONY OF REV. WILLIAM T. ALLAN, OF ILLINOIS, Son of a Slaveholder, Rev. Dr. Allan of Huntsville, Ala.

"At our house it is so common to hear their (the slaves') screams, that we think nothing of it: and lest any one should think that in general the slaves are well treated, let me be distinctly understood:—cruelty is the rule, and kindness the exception."

Extract of a letter dated July 2d, 1834, from Mr. NATHAN COLE, of St. Louis, Missouri, to Arthur Tappan, Esq. of this city:

"I am not an advocate of the immediate and unconditional emancipation of the slaves of our country, yet no man has ever yet depicted the wretchedness of the situation of the slaves in colors as dark for the truth.... I know that many good people are not aware of the treatment to which slaves are usually subjected, nor have they any just idea of the extent of the evil." TESTIMONY OF REV. JAMES A. THOME, A native of Kentucky—Son of Arthur Thome Esq., till recently a Slaveholder.

"Slavery is the parent of more suffering than has flowed from any one source since the date of its existence. Such sufferings too! Sufferings inconceivable and innumerable—unmingled wretchedness from the ties of nature rudely broken and destroyed, the acutest bodily tortures, groans, tears and blood—lying forever in weariness and painfulness, in watchings, in hunger and in thirst, in cold and nakedness.

"Brethren of the North, be not deceived. These sufferings still exist, and despite the efforts of their cruel authors to hush them down, and confine them within the precincts of their own plantations, they will ever and anon, struggle up and reach the ear of humanity."—Mr. Thome's Speech at New York, May, 1834.

The Editor, in speaking of the sufferings of the slaves which are taken by the internal trade to the South West, says:

"Place yourself in imagination, for a moment, in their condition. With heavy galling chains, riveted upon your person; half-naked, half-starved; your back lacerated with the 'knotted Whip;' traveling to a region where your condition through time will be second only to the wretched creatures in Hell.

"This depicting is not visionary. Would to God that it was."

TESTIMONY OF THE PRESBYTERIAN SYNOD OF KENTUCKY; A large majority of whom are slaveholders.

"This system licenses and produces great cruelty.

"Mangling, imprisonment, starvation, every species of torture, may be inflicted upon him, (the slave,) and he has no redress.

"There are now in our whole land two millions of human beings, exposed, defenceless, to every insult, and every injury short of maiming or death, which their fellow men may choose to inflict. They suffer all that can be inflicted by wanton caprice, by grasping avarice, by brutal lust, by malignant spite, and by insane anger. Their happiness is the sport of every whim, and the prey of every passion that may, occasionally, or habitually, infest the master's bosom. If we could calculate the amount of wo endured by ill-treated slaves, it would overwhelm every compassionate heart—it would move even the obdurate to sympathy. There is also a vast sum of suffering inflicted upon the slave by humane masters, as a punishment for that idleness and misconduct which slavery naturally produces.

"Brutal stripes and all the varied kinds of personal indignities, are not the only species of cruelty which slavery licenses."

TESTIMONY OF THE REV. N.H. HARDING, Pastor of the Presbyterian Church, in Oxford, North Carolina, a slaveholder.

"I am greatly surprised that you should in any form have been the apologist of a system so full of deadly poison to all holiness and benevolence as slavery, the concocted essence of fraud, selfishness, and cold hearted tyranny, and the fruitful parent of unnumbered evils, both to the oppressor and the oppressed, THE ONE THOUSANDTH PART OF WHICH HAS NEVER BEEN BROUGHT TO LIGHT."

MR. ASA A. STONE, a theological student, who lived near Natchez, (Mi.,) in 1834 and 5, sent the following with other testimony, to be published under his own name, in the N.Y. Evangelist, while he was still residing there.

"Floggings for all offences, including deficiencies in work, are frightfully common, and most terribly severe.

"Rubbing with salt and red pepper is very common after a severe whipping."

TESTIMONY OF REV. PHINEAS SMITH, Centreville, Allegany Co., N.Y. who lived four years at the South.

"They are badly clothed, badly fed, wretchedly lodged, unmercifully whipped, from month to month, from year to year, from childhood to old age."

REV. JOSEPH M. SADD, Castile, Genessee CO. N.Y. who was till recently a preacher in Missouri, says,

"It is true that barbarous cruelties are inflicted upon them, such as terrible lacerations with the whip, and excruciating tortures are sometimes experienced from the thumb screw."

Extract of a letter from SARAH M. GRIMKÉ, dated 4th Month, 2nd, 1839

"If the following extracts from letters which I have received from South Carolina, will be of any use thou art at liberty to publish them. I need not say, that the names of the writers are withheld of necessity, because such sentiments if uttered at the south would peril their lives."

—South Carolina, 4th Month, 5th, 1835. "With regard to slavery I must confess, though we had heard a great deal on the subject, we found on coming South the half, the worst half too, had not been told us; not that we have ourselves seen much oppression, though truly we have felt its deadening influence, but the accounts we have received from every tongue that nobly dares to speak upon the subject, are indeed deplorable. To quote the language of a lady, who with true Southern hospitality, received us at her mansion. "The northern people don't know anything of slavery at all, they think it is perpetual bondage merely, but of the depth of degradation that that word involves, they have no conception; if they had any just idea of it, they would I am sure use every effort until an end was put to such a shocking system.'

"Another friend writing from South Carolina, and who sustains herself the legal relation of slaveholder, in a letter dated April 4th, 1838, says—'I have some time since, given you my views on the subject of slavery, which so much engrosses your attention. I would most willingly forget what I have seen and heard in my own family, with regard to the slaves. I shudder when I think of it, and increasingly feel that slavery is a curse since it leads to such cruelty.'"