I will relate one circumstance, which shows the little regard that is paid to the feelings of the slave.  During the time that Mr. Isaiah Rogers was superintending the building of a rice machine, one of the slaves complained of a severe toothache.  Swan asked Mr. Rogers to take his hammer and knock out the tooth.

There was a slave on the plantation named Ben, a waiting man.  I occupied a room in the same hut, and had frequent conversations with him.  Ben was a kind-hearted man, and, I believe, a Christian; he would always ask a blessing before he sat down to eat, and was in the constant practice of praying morning and night.—­One day when I was at the hut, Ben was sent for to go to the house.  Ben sighed deeply and went.  He soon returned with a girl about seventeen years of age, whom one of Mr. Swan’s daughters had ordered him to flog.  He brought her into the room where I was, and told her to stand there while he went into the next room:  I heard him groan again as he went.  While there I heard his voice, and he was engaged in prayer.  After a few minutes he returned with a large cowhide, and stood before the girl, without saying a word.  I concluded he wished me to leave the hut, which I did; and immediately after I heard the girl scream.  At every blow she would shriek, “Do, Ben! oh do, Ben!” This is a common expression of the slaves to the person whipping them:  “Do, Massa!” or, “Do, Missus!”

After she had gone, I asked Ben what she was whipped for:  he told me she had done something to displease her young missus; and in boxing her ears, and otherwise beating her, she had scratched her finger by a pin in the girl’s dress, for which she sent her to be flogged.  I asked him if he stripped her before flogging; he said, yes; he did not like to do this, but was obliged to:  he said he was once ordered to whip a woman, which he did without stripping her:  on her return to the house, her mistress examined her back; and not seeing any marks, he was sent for, and asked why he had not whipped her:  he replied that he had; she said she saw no marks, and asked him if he had made her pull her clothes off; he said, No.  She then told him, that when he whipped any more of the women, he must make them strip off their clothes, as well as the men, and flog them on their bare backs, or he should be flogged himself.

Ben often appeared very gloomy and sad:  I have frequently heard him, when in his room, mourning over his condition, and exclaim, “Poor African slave!  Poor African slave!” Whipping was so common an occurrence on this plantation, that it would be too great a repetition to state the many and severe floggings I have seen inflicted on the slaves.  They were flogged for not performing their tasks, for being careless, slow, or not in time, for going to the fire to warm, &c. &c.; and it often seemed as if occasions were sought as an excuse for punishing them.