Slavery unmasked: being a truthful narrative of a three year's residence and journeying in eleven southern states: to which is added the invasion of Kansas, including the last chapter of her wrongs

Front matter

SLAVERY

UNMASKED

By PHILO TOWER.

Chapter I

The author starts for the South — Arrival at New York —Starting Expedition — Went to the Park — Down Broadway — Barnum'a Museum — To the Methodist Book Room — Takes the cars tor Washington — Pauses at Philadelphia for dinner — Starts again at three — Baltimore — Arrival at Washington — Stopped at the National — Midnight Promenade — Senator Walbridgc — Went to the While House — Introduction to President Fillmore — National Gallery — Franklin's Press — Smithsonian Institute — Capitol Hill — Senate Hall — Tour through the buildings — Pictures on the Wall — View from roof of Capitol — Population of Washington — General aspect of the City — Public Buildings — Public Squares — Slavery — Solomon Northrup

— Emonson Family — Tragic Scene — Start for Richmond.

CHAPTER 11.

Richmond — Its locality, institutions and business aspects — Situation of the city — Its streets — The Capitol — City Hall — Monumental Church — Water-power — Articles of produce — Slave mart

— Slave breeders — Rice grounds — Slave girl flogged into criminal intercourse with her master — Premium oft'ered by a master to white men for improving the stock of his slaves, &c. — Internal slave trade — Profits thence accruing — Isaac Williams' thrilling narrative — Dullness of Richmond — Start for Wilmington, N. C. — Pass large plantations — Scenes appear anti-progressive — North Carolina forests — Arrival at Wilmington.

Chapter III

Wilmington — Its site, locality and institutions — appearance from a distance — Its population, commerce, hotels, churches — Sab-

IV CONTENTS.

baths here — Went to M. E. Church South — Sacraments — No colored pastors here — Number of colored communicants — Sabbath desecration — Inhumanity of slave holders — Frightened fugitive — Hounds upon his track — They tree him — Hounds taught to regard the slave as his natural enemy — Puppies taught to hunt slaves — Torture of young Harry — Negro in the creek

— Dogs attack him — Drowned himself — Thrilling narrative of John Little.

Chapter IV

Charleston — Its locality, institutions of blood, groans, &c. — Arrival at Charleston — Promenade through the market — Large commercial city — Fort Moultrie — Nullificrs — South Carolina Arsenal—Early history of Charleston — Shade trees — Dwellings — Churches — Hotels — scarcity of southern Artists — Classes of society — Poor whites — Dined with a slaveholder — Slaves let out — Municipal regulations — Slave mother's babe sold from lier — Slave with an iron collar on — Lower law inquisition — Beautiful Quadroon tortured by the inquisitors — Old Austrian Haynau outdone — Torture of a captured fugitive — Murder of poor Pompey — Black Jed in the stocks — City gossip — Slave Auction — Boarding with an ex-clergyman — Lady inquisitor — Slaves chief wealth of the south -— Dialogue with the slave of a clergyman — No St. Clair's or little Eva's — Imaginary life of the southerner — The martyred slave — Item of black code - Improved inquisitorial tortue — human head stuck upon a pole

— The Charlestonians.

Chapter V

Columbia — Its situation, institutions, &c. — Start for Columbia — Country through which we passed — Carolina swamps — Columbia a fine appearing town — The state house — Hotels — Sell men and women here — No prospect of escape for the poor slave — Torture of a poor slave woman in the public streets — Ramble to the wooden bridge — Brick yard — Southern hatred of Abolitionists — Negro fishing — Dialogue with old fisherman — Master came up — Dialogue with a .slave mother — Incredulity

CONTENTS.' V

of the old woman — Rotuin to Charloston — Start for Savannah, fieorgia — Pa'^'^ago — Rice Holds on Savannah river — Southerncrd read ruele Tom's Cabin.

Chapter VI

Savannah — Its history, locality, institutions, &c. — Situation of Savannah — Its streets and parks — Pulaski House — Old Fort or battle ground — The \yriter's reflections on this field — Anglo Hessian descendants — Soldier in the Mexican war — Visited the garrison with him — Georgia colony and slavery — Wesley and Whiteficld — Patriotic Georgians — Cruel torture of a slave woman — Public whipping of a young mulatto man — Slavery and its apologists — Slaves treated worse here than dumb brutes

— Food of slaves in Georgia — Plantation side view of slavery

— Slave huts — Exposure to the beating storms — Wearing apparel — Master in the midst of his slaves with pistol in one hand and long knife in the other — Unmerciful flogging of a slave — Manner of whipping slaves — Sometimes die under the lash — Negro sermon — Cathauling — Negro shot down — Afiico-.Vmerican race springing up here — Plantation life continued — Jesuits of slavery willing northern apologists — beastly, barbarous conduct towards a slave woman — Man tied to a tree and received three hundred lashes — Poor Ike flogged almost to deith — Bu-iness aspects of Savannah — Slaves have no beds — John and the northerner — Col. H.'s plantation — Blood and murder — Murder of Cuffee — Slave burning — Return north — Storm at sea — Saw a whale — Arrival at New York — Take the car.s for Cincinnati — Arrival there.

Chapter VII

Cincinnati — Its progress, locality, Fugitive Slave Scenes, &c. kc. — A chapter on Cin.-innati called for — Undergroun 1 railroads here — Liberty and slavery meet in open combat — Cincinnati the great metropolis of the west — Its situation — Its streets — Its Levee — Its public buildings — Cincinnati College — Mercantile Library — Melodeon Hall — Masonic Hall — Burnet House — The Cincinnati Observatory — Great Equatorial Tele-

VI CONTENTS.

scope — Churches — Institutions — Western Methodist Book Room — Commerce — Trade of the city — Manufactures — Population — Underground railroad — Stock increasing — The writers stand here — Underground railroad company — kindness of Friend Obadiah, the superintendent — conversation with the fugitives — Rev. Mrs. H. one of the conductors — Her escape from the blood-hounds of Kentucky — Rebecca, Obadiah's companion — Colored orphan asylum — Slave hunters all round

— Black Robert begging for the freedom of his wife — Missis" sippi slave woman — IIow she escaped — Introduction to the fugitives — Dialogue with them — Arrest of five fugitives and murder of a child — The inquest on the child — The object of the habicas corpus — The slave mother Margaret — The slave mother Margaret taken down south again — Slave case — curious developments — The mail boat for Louisville — Arrival there.

CHAPTEE VIII.

Louisville — Its position, locality, and institutions — Landing scene

— Finding a boarding house — Louisville a large city — Has a great business aspect — Many eastern men here — Cassius M. Clay among the Kentuckians — Slavery here — Negro droviers

— Rev. Mr. King — An apostate minister — Colored church — Heard a negro sermon — Dialogue with l)lack Sam — Cassius M. Clay's opinion of slavery — Kentucky chivalry — U. S. Austrio- American despotism.

Chapter IX

Passage to New Orleans — The Ohio — New Albany — Salt River — First evening in the saloon — Slavery on one side and freedom on the other — Get upon the shoals — Religious tracts — Had sacred music on Sundays — Cairo and the Mississippi — Southerners aboard — Northerner going to Texas — Presbyterian merchant of Alabama — New Yorker — Fugitive in irons — Memphis — Fugitive sold here on the auction block — Casper Ilauser — Chickasaw bluffs — Slave camp — Arkansas — Man drowned — Vicksburg — Slave church — Gamblers hung —

CONTENTS. Vll

Grand Gulf — Irishman drowned — Natchez — Red River — Baton Rouge — Bayou Placqucminc — Bayou La Fouchic — Donaldsonville — Broad Mississippi — Pass a large ship — Carrollton — First sight of rotunda of the St. Cliarlcs — A forest of masts — A forest of smoke pipes — Enter New Orleans.

Chapter X

New Orleans — Its mixed masses — The Levee — Its i)anor;iinie scenes — Situation of the city — Its length — Levee embankment — Old streets — Public Squares — Old city proper — 'Three municipalities — Its boat navigation — Its commerce — Public building.s — Dc Soto — Character of New Orleans a century ago — Its character now — Algiers — Marine IIos[iital — Yellow Fever — Cypress Grove Cemetery — Marks of the destroyer — Population — New Orleans under the Spaniards — * Louisiana sold to the United States — Sources of disease — - Reign of Terror — Black Bob sent off to starve — Slave auction

— Harry Hill — Murder of stubborn Bill — Follow the gang to their quarters — Enter the large room — Sir Hyena — The young Quadroon — Sale of Jack to a clergyman — Parting scene between Jack and his wife — Anniversary of battle — Battle Field — Mysteries of New Orleans — Southern amalgamation — Slave girls as bed companions — A father hires a white young man to marry his quadroon daughter — Man sold his whole family — Free colored people — Intelligent colored ladies

— Fandango ball — Seven slaves hung — Old man chained — on his knees — Woman whipped to death — Bob killed by his master — Miss Julia K., of Kentucky — Woman whipped to death at the stake gave birth to child at same time — Chain gang of women — Pious slaveholding ladies — Woman whipping

— Slave marriage — iron collar — Break down wliipping — Slave barracoons — Quadroons bought for bed companions — Houses of assignation — Low brothels — Kept mistcesses.

Chapter XI

Poor whites — Number of slaveholders — De Bow — Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia — Non-slaveholding whites

VUl CONTENTS.

— How regarded south — M. Traver — Distressing picture — White labor — Mr. Tavlor's views — Wm. Gregg, Esq. — White population of South Carolina — Gov. Hammond — No manufacturies South — Low wages South — Richmond Dispatch — Ignorance of Southern whites — Southern Agriculture rude and shiftless — Poor whites are hunters — Mr. Montgomery on Cotton — Emigrants from slave to free states — White population of free states double to that of slave states — Extension of area of slavery no benetit to the slaves.

CHAPTEH XII.

The effects of slavery on labor — Free labor vs. slave labor — Census of 1850 — Slavery stagnates progress — Contrast — Pennsylvania and Virginia — Ohio and Kentucky — De Bow's compendium — Slavery retards natural increase of population — Depreciates value of land — Wastes the resources of a comftmnity — In fifty years Virginia sunk four degrees — Ohio accumulates wealth — Kentucky remains poor — Nine northern states have a total area of only 134,556 square miles — Ten southern states an area 427,9*79.

CHAPTER Xni.

Southern morality and ruffianism — Blood, blood, blood — Fearful revelations, &c. — Burning of a human being — Negro burn^ ed to death — An editor killed — Duel fought — Shooting of Rees Murry — Father shot his daughter — Murder of Frank Hyatt — P. C. Buthell stabbed — Bowie knife fight — Mr. Harris butchered — A son cut his father's head open with an axe — ■ Brother murdered his sister — Wife stabbed — Five slaves hung

— Duel in Korth Carolina — Lynch law — Brutal Murder — T. Jones killed by his own son — Atrocious Murder — Negro woman killed by her son-in-law — Double murder — A Monster

— Bloody deed — Duel fought by two boys — John Casena killed by his wife — Bloody fight vs. southern chivalry — Murder and negro hanging — Man and wife murdered by a slave — Horrible tragedy — Murder of an overseer — Burning of a Negro — Slave whipped to death — Slave girl murdered by her mistress

CONTENTS. IX

plus — Fatal affair — Negro figiit — Suicide of a nlave niotlicr and her two children — llrutalily of a slave girl — A planter killed by his negro overseer — Horrid Affair in Missouri — F. Deuibriski shot — Negro killed by an Overseer — Negress murdered her Master — Duellist — Blood and ruffinij^ni in New Orleans.

CIIArTER XIV.

Slavery and the Sabbath — Southern Sabbath desecration — Shocking to a New Englander — Sabbath in Charleston — Sabbath a holiday — Sabbath in New Orleans — Horse racing on Sunday

— Theatres open - Authorities sanction it — Wasliington Society Ball — Masked Balls — Grand Balloon Ascension — Ponehartraiu ball room for white persons Sunday and tiuadroons Mondays, &c. — Assemblage of lewd women — Prostitutes masked — Women admitted free — Masked wives and husbands Bull Fight — Bull fight described — Appearance in the ring

— Consumptive gamester died in a cock pit — Sabbath working — Public Market.

CHAPTER XV.

Slavery and Religion — Physical cruelties of slavery — Social evils

— Religious instructions of slaves — Number of slaves owned by clergy — Valu;ition of this cleric d human ttock — Pagan Rome outdone — Object of slave culture — Extent of slave culture

— Slave privileges a mockery — Slave piety vs. auction block

— Slave Mi-ssionary — Southern ecclessiastical report — Slaveholders piety — Preaching to slaves — Rev. Albert Barns — Looseness of Slave holding churches — Intemperance .^outh — Slave communion at S;ivannah — Slave religion — Butler's Island — Baptizing slaves — Dr. Nelson — Synod of South Carolina — Some slaves really pious.

CHAPTER XVI.

Spirit of slavery — Its influence upon the slave holders — Influence of institutions upon the people — Slavery a state of war 1*

X CONTENTS.

— Type of southern manners — Southern politeness the polished covering of slavery — Aristocratic bearing of slaveholders — Cross his path and he is a tiger — Bully Brooks — rich southerners never hung — Southerners almost universally carry arms — Often shoot each other — Dr. Graham — Improvidence of southerners

— Southern profusion vs. generosity — Southern penuriousness

— Southerners anti-progressive — Southern idleness — Slaveholders lack energy — Slavery despots — Southerners ignorant

— Southern hospitality hollow hearted — Southern gambling — Drunkenness — Colored gamblers — Party politics.

CHAPTER XVn.

Southern tourists versus slavery Apologists — Free states knowledge of slavery through northern tourists — Of whom are three classes — First, invalids — Second, pleasure takers — Third,

Agents, Artists, &c. — Mr. H , — The writer's talk with Mr.

II , after his return North — Clerical apologists for slavery

— His pay for it — His relation to author of South side view of slavery — Soatliera hospitality a chain-gang plea — Fallacy of such pleas — John the Baptist — Alexander the tyrant — Chief Justice Henderson — N. P. Rogers — Stage driver — George Thompson — Judge Durells — Apologists of slavery would'nt be a slave — Epps, Lagrce k Co., — Slaves have feelings and affections like other men.

CHAPTER XVIII.

Slavery in Free States — Ecclesiastical and political slavery — Great Outrage — The letter of a clergyman respecting himself — Rev. T. B. McCormick — A native Kentuckian minister of a Cumberland Presbyterian church — Thomas Brown — Indignation meeting — $500 Bribe to an Indiana Sheriff — Under-ground railroad business a grave offence — Unchurched a minister for engaging in it — Gov. Powell of Kentucky — Said Rev. Mc- Cormick not only expelled from the church, but driven out of his state by the slave power — Quaker bottom Virginians cross over into Ohio and break up an an anti-slavery meeting — Clubs and axes used — Several quiet people wounded.

CONTENTS. XI

ClIAPTEU XIX.

Kansas, its invasion — The last chapter ot her wronj^s — Missouri ruflians — Law and order men — Depredations by tiic law and order ruffians — Twelve pound Howitzer — Shrcwdne.ss of Mr. BufVum — Free state ladies of Lawrence, patriotism of seventy-six — Ladies carrying powder into Lawrence — Gen. Robinson's laconic reply to a siiniiuons to surrender — Take them by instalments — Murder of Mr. Harber — Franklin — Marshal Jones — 70U men in camp — Disarming strangers — Northern editor disarmed — Sent into a Ruffian camp — Gov. Shannon — Western Missourian fire — Abolitionists — Blue bellied Yankee — (Jen. Pomeroy attacked — Dialogue with the ruffians — Judge Johnson lynched — Odd Fellowship — Rev. Gentleman goes to Kanpas — Mobbed and sent down the Mississippi on a raft — Return to Kansas — Mobbed by South Carolinians — Gen. Tut — Tarred and Feathered — Sacking of Lawrence — Franklin in danger — The Cox hoax — Beginning of the end — Jefferson on the bench — Anarchy and Revolution — Henry Ward Beecher's rifles — 5:150,001 • plundered and destroyed at Lawrence — Arrest of G. W. Brown — Dr. Cutler — Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Jenkins — Jeffrey's Leconipte — Old revolutionary spirit yet alive — Beecher's bibles — Record of Kansas ruffianism — Illegal voters — Printing offices destroyed — Murders — Unlawful ar rests — Pretended laws — Incidents of the glorious victory — Letter from a grand Juror — No excuse for destroying Lawrence — Rapes — Stringfellow in a store — Horses stolen — Red Flag of the pirates — Mr. Chapin — Appeal of Mr. Brown

Murder and Robberies — The exodus stopped — United

States troops at Topeka — Pro-slavery men ordered to leave the territory — Volunteers for Kansas.

AUTIIOirS PREFACE.

The author is a clergyman of one of the Evangelical Northern Churches. Being somewhat disabled by twenty years' pulpit labor, he sought the southern climate in which to recuperate his wasted energies. To accomplish wliich he engaged in several light agencies leading him tlirough portions of eleven slave states, keeping him south nearly three years.

Unlike his brother tourist, author of South Side " View of Slavery," he was a colonizationist, and occupied strong pro-slavery grounds previous to his southern tour. Indeed, to that degree did he carry his pro-slavery sentiments, that many worthy members of his cliiirch were deeply grieved in consequence thereof, while others for the same reason declared him unworthy to preach the gospel.

Entertaining these opinions, he started south, and publicly proclaimed them immediately on arriving at Charleston, S. C. He had not been long there, however, before his convictions on the sul^ject became greatly modified, by matter of fact occurrences which Life ix the South forced upon his observations.

XIV PREFACE.

Having been solicited by a northern editor to become a weekly contributor to his paper, he complied, and wrote some sixty numbers, which appeared in his columns under the caption of "Southern Correspondenle" and over the signature of " Argus."

On arriving north from New Orleans, through the advice of several clerical friends, the author was induced to throw the whole into book form and give it to the public. In accompUshing this design, the numbers constituting said correspondence have been reduced to chapters with an addition of eight new ones, all carefully revised, thus embracing nearly twice the amount of reading matter contained in the original numbers. A few selections have been made from the North Slde View of Slavery, Inside View of Slavery, from the Slave Code, &c., so that out of the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established.

The autlior would beg to assure all those who may honor his book with a perusal, that they shall not have been indulging in fictions ; but in facts, in realities, in history, written out in hlood and stereotyped with tears and groans.

Those of his southern friends into whose hands it may chance to fall, he would assure that he takes pleasure in acknowledging their kind attentions to him

PHKFACE. XV

while in their midst, and i'ui-thcrmore, that no personal animosity or ill treatment from any person or persons in the slave-liolding states has innuoiiced his [x-n in the least.

AVeiv ihe plan of this woi-k to allow it, many tliiiij^s might be said in favor of soutluM-ncrs and llu; south, whicli in these pages would aji[)oar ill-timMl and out of place. This ground being occupied by South Side Viewers and Northern Apologists^ it is not deemed meet that any intrusion should be made upon it.

And finally, in as much as the author lays no special claim to literary merit, lie would request his readers to be indulgent in their criticisms, and also to malce allowance for the circumstances of time, })lace, and ill health of the author while bringing out the work ; all of whicli presented obstacles to be overcome the reader knows not of.

INTUODUCTION.

The ability of nations for self-government, we need scarcely state, is one of the great questions of the nineteenth century. The frequent and stormy discussions of this subject are })roni|)tcd by events which Ibllow each other in such rapid and awful succession as to resemble the tragic scenes of some conqtlicated drama. In looking at the old world, we find governments which had subsisted undisturbed through long, long centuries of despotism, now fallen into a state of decrepitude; and in some instances, their foundations have been desti'oyed by convulsions, requiring but a single hour comparatively to effect their overthrow.

Circumstances of such a character are fearfully ominous to statesmen of the school of Montesquieu, Guizot, and Mettcrnich who have elaborated upon the philosophy of !^[onarchy, Ecpublics, and Revolutions, who sagely maintain that rcjiublican institutions are only adapted to ])Oor and thinly inhaljited countries, and that, as the United States of America become rich and po})ulous, democracy will die out and be superceded by aristocracy and monarchy. To this, it is only necessary to remark, that the States of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, portions of the Union the wealthiest and most thickly ])0})ulated, — portions compared with which few districts of Euro])e stand very greatly ahead, are, at tlie same time, tlie most tlioroughly democratic ; having grown so just in proportion as wealth has increased, and population multiplied — a phenomenon by no means peculiar to themj but one of which the operation may be traced in all the free States of the American Union.

To this fair prospect, however, every freeman is forced to admit a painful drawback, viz : the unfortunate introduction of African Slavery. At first a mere excrescence upon the original plan, it has grown in several of the Southern States, both new and old, until it has become the most marked feature and predominating influence in their social system ; introducing into that portion of the American Union, and indeed into the administration of the national government, a strange and most incongruous mixture of the republican system of equal rights, backed by the metaphysical theory of the natural equality of man, with the miserable spirit of caste and hereditary aristocracy of birth and race — a state of society engendering all that spirit of contempt for manual labor ; all that spirit of phinder and domineering insolence and cruelty which distinguished the haughty republics of antiquity, without their taste, eloquence, and artistical and warlike renown ; and at the same time all the huckstering trickery, sharpness and meanness of modern municipal system, without its equality, industry, wealth and comfort. Nor can any man yet tell what, as to the entire American Union, the result is to be of this most discordant and incongruous mixture.

The following fact is well known by every histori-

INTltODUCTION. 19

cal student, viz; that in all nations in which rc])iiblican government has either not been tried, or has ultimately been overthrown, there has been some vigorous organization of the privileged part which has proved too strong for the liberty of the whole. Our ancestors, who drew up the Federal Constitution, were not only great and wise men, but also well read in political history, and when they inquired for the antagonists to freedom against which it would be prudent to erect safe-guards, they found two to be largely treated of in the books, viz : an order of priesthood, and an order of hereditary nobles. Thus instructed, they took good care to provide that no title of " nobility shall be granted by the United States," [Constitution, Art. 1, § 9,] and that Congress "shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion," [Amendments, Art. I.] Unfortunately for us, however, history gave them no warning in respect to the subversion of free institutions by an aristocracy constituted and organized on the basis of ownership of slaves. Such a revolution was without precedent, and against it accordingly they failed to set up any express constitutional defence. As a result, we are now, to say the least, in the last stage of a vigorous attempt at a revolution of that kind.

1'hc slave-holding oligarchy of these United States, consisting according to the late census of but three hundred thousand in a population of twenty-five millions, (while others on apparently good grounds, believe them to amount to not more than one-third that number,) is aiming to confirm and consolidate beyond recall, that control over the government of the coantry, which, from an early jjenod, has been passing more and more rapidly into its hands. Hence the Reign of Terror now desecrating with blood the virgin soil of Kansas, and the rattle of cliains amid the strongholds of freedom at the north, as the captured fugitive is forced back into perpetual bondage by the minions of this despicable oligarchy. Hence the cruel infanticide by fugitive slave mothers in northern cities, and the imprisonment of northern freemen by south-side northern judges in northern prisons. There is a tremendous issue to be met in this country between the descendants of its revolutionary sires, between the north and the south, in short between republicanism and despotism ; and the nations of the world arc interested spectators of the approaching contest. The struggle has already commenced, the combatants are in the field, and it is in vain we at the north cry out that the contest is unseasonable and premature. Ailmit that over zealous and fanatical haste may have precipittited a struggle which we would gladly have deferred, and, slumbering out our own time in cpiiet, have thrust upon the days of our children. No matter. There is no blocking the wheels of destiny in this thing ; we cannot have our way. The trumpet has sounded, and opposing forces are wheeling into position on the gory field. "We may cry peace, peace, but there is no peace," Fight we must, upon one side or the other. As above remarked, the contest is already begun, and will soon become general.

In such a struggle it is clearly seen there can be no neutrality, and it is time to be choosin*!,- hhcLm- what l)anner we will marshal ourselves: whether the ensign of ireedom, or the dai-k flag of slavery, drenched in the blood of murdered bondmen. Re|)ublicanipm, d(Mnoeraey, freedom, &e., are meaning terms in the; North, ])erfeetly familiar to all classes; all have a correct knowledge of tlicir import, or suppose they have. But despotism, southern despotism, or the despotism of the slave states, is a thing known at the North only by name, and in general. Few have seen it and gazed u})on it, face to face, in its own blood-stained land of tears and groans; fewer still liave studied it; Avhile the great mass are totally- ignorant of its real debasing character.

But what is southern despotism, or American slavery, this curse and incubus of our common country, this stench in the nostrils of Christendom, and by-word of reproach among the heathen?

Southern slavery can, probably, be best defined by its own statute book. At least, we shall attempt to show it up in this light first, and then illustrate by our personal observations made in eleven slave states. Slaveholders cannot, surely, complain of this mode of treating it — cannot complain that the system should be taken to be the very thing which the law of the slaveholding states have declared it to be, laws framed by themselves for the very purpose of defending and protecting their elainis. No laws were ever framed by any people for the sole purpose of restraining specific and enumerated 'crimes, unless the instances of such crimes had become aggravated and general among them. The laws of the slave states, therefore, which fix the condition of slavery, for the most part describe that condition. And even the laws made to restrain its cruelties, bear testimony to their existence. For an illustration, under the item last mentioned : When the laws of South Carolina gravely forbid the masters, under a petty pecuniary penalty, to " cut out the tongues, put out the eyes, or cruelly scald, burn or deprive any slave of any limb, or murder," and when they specify other enormities too gross for the public eye, they proclaim to the world the fact that such cruel practices did prevail to an extent demanding legislation, at least.

And again, under the former item : When the same statute permits the master to inflict punishment on the slave "by whipping or beating with a horse whip, cow skin, switch, or putting irons on, or imprisoning," (fee, the legislature at once defines and describes the common condition of slavery in that State. Characteristics of the system thus obtained, are to be reckoned not among its incidents and abuses, but among its essential and distinctive features — ^the things wherein it essentially consists. With these remarks, and with the Statute Books before us, we will answer the question, " What is American Slavery ?" By their own showing, by laws enacted in slave states for the regulation of their human property.