take pity on hunger.  Who ever went famishing from an Indian’s wigwam?  As much as hunger craves, is the Indian’s free gift even to an enemy.  The necessity for food is such a universal want, so constant, manifest and imperative, that the heart is more touched with pity by the plea of hunger, and more ready to supply that want than any other.  He who can habitually inflict on others the pain of hunger by giving them insufficient food, can habitually inflict on them any other pain.  He can kick and cuff and flog and brand them, put them in irons or the stocks, can overwork them, deprive them of sleep, lacerate their backs, make them work without clothing, and sleep without covering.

Other cruelties may be perpetrated in hot blood and the acts regretted as soon as done—­the feeling that prompts them is not a permanent state of mind, but a violent impulse stung up by sudden provocation.  But he who habitually withholds from his dependents sufficient sustenance, can plead no such palliation.  The fact itself shows, that his permanent state of mind toward them is a brutal indifference to their wants and sufferings—­A state of mind which will naturally, necessarily, show itself in innumerable privations and inflictions upon them, when it can be done with impunity.

If, therefore, we find upon examination, that the slaveholders do not furnish their slaves with sufficient food, and do thus habitually inflict upon them the pain of hunger, we have a clue furnished to their treatment in other respects, and may fairly infer habitual and severe privations and inflictions; not merely from the fact that men are quick to feel for those who suffer from hunger, and perhaps more ready to relieve that want than any other; but also, because it is more for the interest of the slaveholder to supply that want than any other; consequently, if the slave suffer in this respect, he must as the general rule, suffer more in other respects.

We now proceed to show that the slaves have insufficient food.  This will be shown first from the express declarations of slaveholders, and other competent witnesses who are, or have been residents of slave states, that the slaves generally are under-fed. And then, by the laws of slave states, and by the testimony of slaveholders and others, the kind, quantity, and quality, of their allowance will be given, and the reader left to judge for himself whether the slave must not be a sufferer.

THE SLAVES SUFFER FROM HUNGER—­DECLARATIONS OF SLAVE-HOLDERS AND OTHERS

Hon. Alexander Smyth, a slave holder, and for ten years, Member of Congress from Virginia, in his speech on the Missouri question.  Jan 28th, 1820.

“By confining the slaves to the Southern states, where crops are raised for exportation, and bread and meat are purchased, you doom them to scarcity and hunger. It is proposed to hem in the blacks where they are ILL FED.”