OCR Text |
Show Mrs. Mafon & Mrs. Child. if thou wert a slave, toiling in the fields of Carolina, thou would t think the time had fully come." l\!1·. Thome, of Kentucky, in the com\ e of hi~ eloquent lectures on this subject,. aid: "I breathed my fir:::t breath in an atmosphere of SI:wery. But though I am heir to a , lave inheritance, I am bold to denounce the whole sy ' tern as an outrage, a complication of crimes, and wrongs, and cruelties, that rnaI c c ange1 s weep." l\Ir. Allen, of Alabama, in a discnssion with the students at Lane Seminary, in 1 34, told of "a slave who was t iPd up and beaten all day, with a paddle full of hole . At night, his fle. h wa:; literally pounded to a j 'lly. The pnnishmrnt wa inflicted within lH·aring of the Academy and the Public Green. But no one took any notice of it. No one thought any wrong wns done. At our house, it is o common to hrnr screamfi from a neighboring plantation, that we think nothing of it. Le .. t any one should think that the lave arc ge.nentl1y well treated, and that the case I ha,·e mention ·d are exrPption. , let me be di ~ tinctly unde rstood that cruelty is the n.tle, and kinclnc :s is the cxc ption." In the amc di -cus· ion, a student from Virginia, after relating ca c of great cruelty, said: "Such thing arc common all over Virginia; at lea t, so far as I am acquaint ed. But the planters generally avoid punishing their shn-es before strange1·s." Miss l\fattie Griffith, of K entucky, whose cntil'e property consi -ted in slave:.~, emancipated them all. The noble-hcart<'cl girl wrote to me: "I shall go forth into the world pennil ess ; but I shall work with a licrht heart, and, b '· t of all. I . hall 0 live with an easy con. cicncc." J>reYion to thi. g<'n •rom; resolution, he had neycr r ead any Abolition docnmcnt.., and entertained the common outh •rn prejudice again"'t them. But her own ob. crvation so deeply imp res ed h er with the enormities of Slavery, that she was impell ed to puhli ·h a book, called "The Autobiography of a Female Slave." I Mrs. M'afon & Mrs. Child. 343 read it with thrilling interest ; but some of the scenes made my nerve ~ quiver so painfully, that I told her I hoped th y were too highly color •d. S he ·hook her head adly, and r eplied: ' I am sorry to ay that every incident in the book has come within my own knowl 'dge." St. George Tucker, Judge and Prof'"sor of Law in Virginia, speaking of the legalized murder of runaway., .-aid: "Such arc the cruelties to which a tate of Slavery gives birth- such the horrors to which the human mind i capable of being reconciled by its adoption." Alluding to our struggle in '76, he aid: " \Vhilc we proclaimed our resolution to live free or die, we impo~ed on out· fellow-men, of different complexion, a Slavery ten thou. and times worse than the utmost extremity of the oppres ion of wl1ich we complained/' Governor Giles, in a l\fcs age to the L •gislature of Virginia, referring to the cu tom of selling free colored people into lavery, a a puni. hment for offeuccs not capital, . aid: "Slavery mu t he admitted to he a pun£sll.ment of tlte kigltest order; aml, according to the ju. t rule for th~ ~tpportionment of puni:hment to crimes, it ought to be appli ·d cnly to crimes of lite lug/test order. The most distrc~siug reflection in the application of this puni ·hment to female offenders, is that it extend~ to th('i1· ofr.;pring; and the innoc •nt are thus punished with the guilty." Y ct one hundred a11<l twenty thousand innocent l>abcs in thi country arc annually subjected to a punishment which your Go,·crnor declared oug ht to l>c applied only to crimes of the hig he t ordet·. Jeffet"on aid : " One day of American Slavery is worse than a thousand yem·s of that which we ro c in arm to oppo e." Alludi11g to in. urrcction. , he aid: " The Almighty has no attribute that can take , ide with u in such a contest.'' J ohn Randolph declared: "Every planter i .~ a sentinel at his own door. Eve ry t)outhcrn moth~r, when she hears an ahmn of fire in the night, instincti vcly presses h er infant closer to her bosom." |