“February 4th.—­Since writing the preceding, I have been to Carrollton, on a visit to my uncle, Rev. Hugh Barr, who was originally from Tennessee, lived 12 or 14 years in Courtland, Lawrence county, Alabama, and moved to Illinois in 1835.  In conversation with the family, around the fireside, they stated a multitude of horrid facts, that were perfectly notorious in the neighborhood of Courtland.

“William P. Barr, an intelligent young man, and member of his father’s church in Carrollton, stated the following.  Visiting at a Mr. Mosely’s, near Courtland, William Mosely came in with a bloody knife in his hand, having just stabbed a negro man.  The negro was sitting quietly in a house in the village, keeping a woman company who had been left in charge of the house,—­when Mosely, passing along, went in and demanded his business there.  Probably his answer was not as civil as slaveholding requires, Mosely rushed upon him and stabbed him.  The wound laid him up for a season.  Mosley was called to no account for it.  When he came in with the bloody knife, he said he wished he had killed him.

“John Brown, a slaveholder, and a member of the Presbyterian church in Courtland, Alabama, stated the following a few weeks since, in Carrollton.  A man near Courtland, of the name of Thompson, recently shot a negro woman through the head; and put the pistol so close that her hair was singed.  He did it in consequence of some difficulty in his dealings with her as a concubine.  He buried her in a log heap; she was discovered by the buzzards gathering around it.

“William P. Barr stated the following, as facts well known in the neighborhood of Courtland, but not witnessed by himself.  Two men, by the name of Wilson, found a fine looking negro man at ’Dandridge’s Quarter,’ without a pass; and flogged him so that he died in a short time.  They were not punished.

“Col.  Blocker’s overseer attempted to flog a negro—­he refused to be flogged; whereupon the overseer seized an axe, and cleft his skull.  The Colonel justified it.

“One Jones whipped a woman to death for ‘grabbling’ a potato hill.  He owned 80 or 100 negroes.  His own children could not live with him.

“A man in the neighborhood of Courtland, Alabama, by the name of Puryear, was so proverbially cruel that among the negroes he was usually called ‘the Devil.’  Mrs. Barr, wife of Rev. H. Barr, was at Puryear’s house, and saw a negro girl about 13 years old, waiting around the table, with a single garment—­and that in cold weather; arms and feet bare—­feet wretchedly swollen—­arms burnt, and full of sores from exposure.  All the negroes under his care made a wretched appearance.