fastened in the stocks, my clothing removed, and the whipping began.  Boss whipped me a while, then he sat down and read his paper, after which the whipping was resumed.  This continued for two hours.  Fastened as I was in the stocks, I could only stand and take lash after lash, as long as he desired, the terrible rawhide cutting into my flesh at every stroke.  Then he used peach tree switches, which cracked the flesh so the blood oozed out.  After this came the paddle, two and a half feet long and three inches wide.  Salt and water was at once applied to wash the wounds, and the smarting was maddening.  This torture was common among the southern planters.  God only knows what I suffered under it all, and He alone gave me strength to endure it.  I could hardly move after the terrible ordeal was finished, and could scarcely bear my clothes to touch me at first, so sore was my whole body, and it was weeks before I was myself again.

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Preaching to the slaves.

As an offset, probably, to such diabolical cruelties as those which were practiced upon me in common with nearly all the slaves in the cotton region of the south, it was the custom in the section of country where I lived to have the white minister preach to the servants Sunday afternoon, after the morning service for the whites.  The white people hired the minister by the year to preach for them at their church.  Then he had to preach to each master’s slaves in turn.  The circuit was made once a month, but there was service of some kind every Sunday.  The slaves on some places gathered in the yard, at others in the white folks’ school houses, and they all seemed pleased and eager to hear the word of God.  It was a strong evidence of their native intelligence and discrimination that they could discern the difference between the truths of the “word” and the professed practice of those truths by their masters.  My Boss took pride in having all his slaves look clean and tidy at the Sabbath service; but how would he have liked to have the slaves, with backs lacerated with the lash, appear in those assemblies with their wounds uncovered?  The question can never be answered.  The master and most of his victims have gone where professions of righteousness will not avail to cover the barbarities practised here.

* * * * *

A family of free persons sold into slavery.

My wife Matilda was born in Fayette county, Kentucky, June 17th, 1830.  It seems that her mother and her seven children were to have been free according to the old Pennsylvania law.  There were two uncles of the family who were also to have been free, but who had been kept over time; so they sued for their freedom, and gained it.  The lawyers in the case were abolitionists and friends to the slaves, and saw that these men had justice.  After they had secured