“When a boy, in Bourbon co., Kentucky, my father lived near a slaveholder of the name of Clay, who had a large number of slaves; I remember being often at their quarters; not one of their shanties, or hovels, had any floor but the earth.  Their clothing was truly neither fit for covering nor decency.  We could distinctly, of a still morning, hear this man whipping his blacks, and hear their screams from my father’s farm; this could be heard almost any still morning about the dawn of day.  It was said to be his usual custom to repair, about the break of day, to their cabin doors, and, as the blacks passed out, to give them as many strokes of his cowskin as opportunity afforded; and he would proceed in this manner from cabin to cabin until they were all out.  Occasionally some of his slaves would abscond, and upon being retaken they were punished severely; and some of them, it is believed, died in consequence of the cruelty of their usage.  I saw one of this man’s slaves, about seventeen years old, wearing a collar, with long iron horns extending from his shoulders far above his head.

“In the winter of 1828-29 I traveled through part of the states of Maryland and Virginia to Baltimore.  At Frost Town, on the national road, I put up for the night.  Soon after, there came in a slaver with his drove of slaves; among them were two young men, chained together.  The bar room was assigned to them for their place of lodging—­those in chains were guarded when they had to go out.  I asked the ‘owner’ why he kept these men chained; he replied, that they were stout young fellows, and should they rebel, he and his son would not be able to manage them.  I then left the room, and shortly after heard a scream, and when the landlady inquired the cause, the slaver coolly told her not to trouble herself, he was only chastising one of his women.  It appeared that three days previously her child had died on the road, and been thrown into a hole or crevice in the mountain, and a few stones thrown over it; and the mother weeping for her child was chastised by her master, and told by him, she ’should have something to cry for.’  The name of this man I can give if called for.

“When engaged in this journey I spent about one month with my relations in Virginia.  It being shortly after new year, the time of hiring was over; but I saw the pounds, and the scaffolds which remained of the pounds, in which the slaves had been penned up”

M. GEORGE W. WESTGATE, of Quincy, Illinois, who lived in the southwestern slave states a number of years, has furnished the following statement.

“The great mass of the slaves are under drivers and overseers.  I never saw an overseer without a whip; the whip usually carried is a short loaded stock, with a heavy lash from five to six feet long.  When they whip a slave they make him pull off his shirt, if he has one, then make him lie down on his face, and taking their stand at the length of the lash, they inflict the punishment.  Whippings are so universal that a negro that has not been whipped is talked of in all the region as a wonder.  By whipping I do not mean a few lashes across the shoulders, but a set flogging, and generally lying down.