Such scenes of horror as above described are so common in Georgia that they attract no attention.  To threaten them with death, with breaking in their teeth or jaws, or cracking their heads, is common talk, when scolding at the slaves.—­Those who run away from their masters and are caught again generally fare the worst.  They are generally lodged in jail, with instructions from the owner to have them cruelly whipped.  Some order the constables to whip them publicly in the market.  Constables at the south are generally savage, brutal men.  They have become so accustomed to catching and whipping negroes, that they are as fierce as tigers.  Slaves who are absent from their yards, or plantations, after eight o’clock P.M., and are taken by the guard in the cities, or by the patrols in the country, are, if not called for before nine o’clock A.M. the next day, secured in prisons; and hardly ever escape, until their backs are torn up by the cowhide.  On plantations, the evenings usually present scenes of horror.  Those slaves against whom charges are preferred for not having performed their tasks, and for various faults, must, after work-hours at night, undergo their torments.  I have often heard the sound of the lash, the curses of the whipper, and the cries of the poor negro rending the air, late in the evening, and long before day-light in the morning.

It is very common for masters to say to the overseers or drivers, “put it on to them,” “don’t spare that fellow,” “give that scoundrel one hundred lashes,” &c.  Whipping the women when in delicate circumstances, as they sometimes do, without any regard to their entreaties or the entreaties of their nearest friends, is truly barbarous.  If negroes could testify, they would tell you of instances of women being whipped until they have miscarried at the whipping-post.  I heard of such things at the south—­they are undoubtedly facts.  Children are whipped unmercifully for the smallest offences, and that before their mothers.  A large proportion of the blacks have their shoulders, backs, and arms all scarred up, and not a few of them have had their heads laid open with clubs, stones, and brick-bats, and with the butt-end of whips and canes—­some have had their jaws broken, others their teeth knocked in or out; while others have had their ears cropped and the sides of their cheeks gashed out.  Some of the poor creatures have lost the sight of one of their eyes by the careless blows of the whipper, or by some other violence.

But punishing of slaves as above described, is not the only mode of torture.  Some tie them up in a very uneasy posture, where they must stand all night, and they will then work them hard all day—­that is, work them hard all day and torment them all night.  Others punish by fastening them down on a log, or something else, and strike them on the bare skin with a board paddle full of holes.  This breaks the skin, I should presume, at every hole where it comes