“Each one was allowed one blanket in which they rolled themselves up.  I examined their houses but could not discover any thing like a bed.  I was informed that when they had a sufficiency of potatoes the slaves were allowed some; but the season that I was there they did not raise more than were wanted for seed.  All their corn was ground in one hand-mill, every night just as much as was necessary for the family, then each one his daily portion, which took considerable time in the night.  I often awoke and heard the sound of the mill.  Grinding the corn in the night, and in the dark, after their day’s labor, and the want of other food, were great hardships.

“The traveling in those parts, among the islands, was altogether with boats, rowed by from four to ten slaves, which often stopped at our plantation, and staid through the night, when the slaves, after rowing through the day, were left to shift for themselves; and when they went to Savannah with a load of cotton the were obliged to sleep in the open boats, as the law did not allow a colored person to be out after eight o’clock in the evening, without a pass from his master.”

TESTIMONY OF RICHARD MACY.

“The above account is from my brother, I was at work on Hilton Head about twenty miles north of my brother, during the same winter.  The same allowance of one peck of corn for a week, the same kind of houses to live in, and the same method of grinding their corn, and always in the night, and in the dark, was practiced there.

“A number of instances of severe whipping came under my notice.  The first was this:—­two men were sent out to saw some blocks out of large live oak timber on which to raise my building.  Their saw was in poor order, and they sawed them badly, for which their master stripped them naked and flogged them.

“The next instance was a boy about sixteen years of age.  He had crept into the coach to sleep; after two or three nights he was caught by the coach driver, a northern man, and stripped entirely naked, and whipped without mercy, his master looking on.

“Another instance.  The overseer, a young white man, had ordered several negroes a boat’s crew, to be on the spot at a given time.  One man did not appear until the boat had gone.  The overseer was very angry and told him to strip and be flogged; he being slow, was told if he did not instantly strip off his jacket, he, the overseer, would whip it off which he did in shreds, whipping him cruelly.

“The man ran into the barrens and it was about a month before they caught him.  He was newly starved, and at last stole a turkey; then another, and was caught.