The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser. — 1844-11-19 (Liverpool, Merseyside, England)

HORRORS OF AMERICAN SLAVERY.—Numbers of the poor slaves in America come to an untimely end by a series of acts of barbarity inflicted upon them at different times, which, though they do not kill them immediately, yet undermine the constitution by degrees, so that they do not live out half their days. It is not the mere whip. ping while at their labour in the field which destroys them, but the repeated punishments and sometimes tortures they are made to endure, at the caprice of an overseer, when their labour is over in the day. Frequently they are made to wear chains, and to work in them for weeks together, which occasions them to suffer by excoriations of the skin and flesh. Iron collars are frequently fastened to their necks, which, while they give them pain, for the same reason hinder them from sleep, on account of their long-projecting prongs. They are often put with their feet in the stocks, and left there all night, (and this for days and weeks together,) where they suffer again, and where sleep is again impossible, and yet they are made to rise as early in the morning to their work as the rest of the gang, though then unfit for labour. That dradful instrument, the thumb-screw, is also at times applied to them. It is screwed down tight till it produces great pain, sometimes forcing the blood out of the ends of the thumbs. The overseer then takes away the key, and no one can relieve their sufferings, even though they faint with the pain, till the same key is brought to unlock it. The damp and loathsome dungeon is another source of punishment, in which the victim may lie for months, and even years, for so Judge Stroud says, if the owner wills it. These instruments 'ben of torture, which are more or less used, together with hard and forced work of fifteen hours per day, produce a slow and lingering death, which is as much murder as if the victim had been killed outright. The same judge confirms a part of this account. " His," says he, (the slave's,) " life is ordinarily passed in incessant toil. He is awaked from his slumbers at the call of his master often before dawn ; he continues his heartless labour with but slight intermission for rest and food till night has closed around him. Hard worked and scantily fed his bodily energies are exhausted." The same worthy judge says also, " The master may at his discretion inflict any punishment upon the person of his slave." Again, " where," says he, p. 40, " the life of a slave is thus feebly protected, his limbs, as might be expected, share no better fate." I quote again from the act of 1740 of South Carolina. "In case any person should wilfully cut out the tongue, put out the eyes, castrate or cruelly scald, burn, or deprive any slave of any limb or member, or shall inflict any other cruel punishment, other than whipping with a horse-whip, cow-skin, switch, or small stick, or by putting irons on, or confining or imprisoning such slave, every such person shall for any such offence forfeit the sum of one hundred pounds current money." " This section has," continued the judge, " as far as I have been able to learn, been suffered to disgrace the statute-book from the year 1740 to the present hour. Among all the mutations which Christianity has effected within the last century, she has not been able to conquer the spirit which dictated this abominable law. To say nothing of the trifling penalty for mutilation, what idea of humanity must a people entertain, who by direct legislation sanction the beating, without limit, of a fellow-creature with a horse-whip or cow•skin, and the infliction of any torture which the ingenuity and malignity of man may invent, in the application of irons to the human body, and the perpetual incarceration, if the master so will, of the unfortunate slave in a dungeon keep, however loathsome ?"—Clarkson's Letter.