I heard the mother of this man say it would be no surprise to her, if he killed a slave some day, for, that, when transported with passion he did not seem to care what he did.  He once broke a large stick over the back of a slave and at another time the ivory butt-end of a long coach whip over the head of another.  This last was attacked with epileptic fits some months after, and has ever since been subject to them, and occasionally to violent fits of insanity.

Southern mistresses sometimes flog their slaves themselves though generally one slave is compelled to flog another.  Whilst staying at a friend’s house some years ago, I one day saw the mistress with a cow-hide in her hand, and heard her scolding in an under tone, her waiting man, who was about twenty-five years old.  Whether she actually inflicted the blows I do not know, for I hastened out of sight and hearing.  It was not the first time I had seen a mistress thus engaged.  I knew she was a cruel mistress, and had heard her daughters disputing, whether their mother did right or wrong, to send the slave children, (whom she sent out to sweep chimneys) to the work house to be whipped if they did not bring in their wages regularly.  This woman moved in the most fashionable circle in Charleston.  The income of this family was derived mostly from the hire of their slaves, about one hundred in number.  Their luxuries were blood-bought luxuries indeed.  And yet what stranger would ever have inferred their cruelties from the courteous reception and bland manners of the parlor.  Every thing cruel and revolting is carefully concealed from strangers, especially those from the north.  Take an instance.  I have known the master and mistress of a family send to their friends to borrow servants to wait on company, because their own slaves had been so cruelly flogged in the work house, that they could not walk without limping at every step, and their putrified flesh emitted such an intolerable smell that they were not fit to be in the presence of company.  How can northerners know these things when they are hospitably received at southern tables and firesides?  I repeat it, no one who has not been an integral part of a slaveholding community, can have any idea of its abominations.  It is a whited sepulchre full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness.  Blessed be God, the Angel of Truth has descended and rolled away the stone from the mouth of the sepulchre, and sits upon it.  The abominations so long hidden are now brought forth before all Israel and the sun.  Yes, the Angel of Truth sits upon this stone, and it can never be rolled back again.