The Lancaster gazette. [volume] (Lancaster, Ohio) 1863-1886, 1864-12-15
A SLAVE PICTURE.

We have boen looking at a picture
of slavery in Mississippi, the State
where we were raised, over which the
confagration of civil war has been
surging like sand.storms on the des-
ert. There were the bloodhound3
tearing down the painting fugitivos.-
There stood the trembling slave on
the block with his swarthy mate
crouching down on her knees pleading
with the obdurate soul-driver.
There was tho octaroon, stripped TO
to the waist and tied down TO the
whipping post, while her tender fesl
rose in discOlored welts, under the ma
ny stranded lash of the oversctr, and
there, too, was another infuriatcd
wretch mounted Oh horse, lashing a
worn out delinquent slave across the
cotton field. .....
Does the reader ask: Arc these
things SO? We aRwer, yes. We
have seen all these things in real life,
over and over again We have seen
all the grets and heart-rendings, and
cold bloodcdness of the auction. block
and the slavc.pcn; we have seen the
remains ofhuman beings who had been
hunted down and torn to pieces by
more than two score of bloodhounds,
with the entrals trailing along the
ground, and the throat still bleeding
from the fangs Of tho dogs! We have
seen men sell their children and
their sons children at a public
auction. We have seen woman, with
Il face as white as our own, stripped to
the waist, pinioned to the whipping
post, till the blood ran down to her
heels, while the scars were afterwards
washed with brine, 20 prevent the lac
Grated back of the chattel from being
hy-blo Hn. More than this, we have
seen an old man, crippled with chill,
blains, whipped to the field while the
soles of his feet were sioughcd off with
rotten ness and alive with maggots
These are some of the aspects of
slavery which we have seen ourselves,
both in boyhood and in manhood s
years. They are not abolition lies,
but the observations of ono born, and
who lived to manhood, under all the
influences and prejudiccs of this cruel,
remorscless, and thrice damned insti-
tuition Of human slavery. The aboll-
ton speakers and writers have not
told, because they never knew, one
half of the horrid truth. The acts and
scenes above related occurred in Low
ndcs county, Mississippi, near the
town of Columbus, whore in tho ten
dcrness of the young child's heart, we
have listened sympathetica!ly to the
pitiful complaints OF these poor black
people, who soon learned that we would
not betray them. 'Tis true, these arc
the more horrible, revolving features
ofslavcry, for all masters arc not cru
ell but mercy and kindness to the slave
arc the exceptions, while cruelty and
stony heartedness are the rule of the
coarse minded, bestial devils usually
employed as oversccrs.
Now. will any northern doughface,
and cold ,bloodcd Democratic parasite,
who laps his prodigal tongue about the
shoe sole of the slave holder, who dcs-
piscs his scrvility. be any longer at a
loss to understand why we hate an in.
stitution which is antagonistic to every
honorable human impulse, the uu-
spcakablc wickedness of which is for.
ever rising up in all its black, insuffer-
able deformity before the judgment
seat of q just God, to whom the rude
tongue and swelling hearts of the mill.
ions of miserable negro slaves have
been so long crying in pitiful abandon
ment2 If there were anything that
could destroy our faith in the exist
cnce off rig ghtcous Almighty. il is the
apparent long time the outcry of the
tortured slaves has been in reaching
Tho car of Deity. But at length the
long sufference of Heaven is at an end.
Sluggish justice at last comes forth
from beneath the Throne; tbunders
threaten in the sky and flaming bolts
drop upon and blast the land that has
become drunken with the blood Of
these poor, despised and friendless
people. The good Angel of Retribu.
ton is at last out on the war path, and
the doom Of slavery is read both in
the gloom Of starless night and dby the