“The said girl was sold by Messrs. Wm. Payne & Sons, as the property of an estate of a Mr. Gearrall, and purchased by a Mr. Moses, and sold by him to a Thomas Prisley, of Edgefield District, of whom I bought her on the 17th of April, 1819.  She is 16 or 17 years of age, slim made, LATELY BRANDED ON THE LEFT CHEEK, THUS, R, AND A PIECE TAKEN OFF OF HER EAR ON THE SAME SIDE; THE SAME LETTER ON THE INSIDE OF BOTH HER LEGS.

“ABNER ROSS, Fairfield District.”

But instead of filling pages with similar advertisements, illustrating the horrible brutality of slaveholders towards their slaves, the reader is referred to the preceding pages of this work, to the scores of advertisements written by slaveholders, printed by slaveholders, published by slaveholders, in newspapers edited by slaveholders and patronized by slaveholders; advertisement describing not only men and boys, but women aged and middle-aged, matrons and girls of tender years, their necks chafed with iron collars with prongs, their limbs galled with iron rings and chains, and bars of iron, iron hobbles and shackles, all parts of their persons scarred with the lash, and branded with hot irons, and torn with rifle bullets, pistol balls and buck shot, and gashed with knives, their eyes out, their ears cut off, their teeth drawn out, and their bones broken.  He is referred also to the cool and shocking indifference with which these slaveholders, ‘gentlemen’ and ‘ladies,’ Reverends, and Honorables, and Excellencies, write and print, and publish and pay, and take money for, and read and circulate, and sanction, such infernal barbarity.  Let the reader ponder all this, and then lay it to heart, that this is that ’public opinion’ of the slaveholders which protects their slaves from all injury, and is an effectual guarantee of personal security.

However far gone a community may be in brutality, something of protection may yet be hoped for from its ‘public opinion,’ if respect for woman survive the general wreck; that gone, protection perishes; public opinion becomes universal rapine; outrages, once occasional, become habitual; the torture, which was before inflicted only by passion, becomes the constant product of a system, and, instead of being the index of sudden and fierce impulses, is coolly plied as the permanent means to an end.  When women are branded with hot irons on their faces; when iron collars, with prongs, are riveted about their necks; when iron rings are fastened upon their limbs, and they are forced to drag after them chains and fetters; when their flesh is torn with whips, and mangled with bullets and shot, and lacerated with knives; and when those who do such things, are regarded in the community, and associated with as ‘gentlemen’ and ‘ladies;’ to say that the ‘public opinion’ of such a community is a protection to its victims, is to blaspheme God, whose creatures they are, cast in his own sacred image, and dear to him as the apple of his eye.