Extract from an oration, delivered at Baltimore, July 4, 1797, by GEORGE BUCHANAN, M.D., member of the American Philosophical Society.

Their situation (the slaves’) is insupportable; misery inhabits their cabins, and pursues them in the field.  Inhumanly beaten, they often fall sacrifices to the turbulent tempers of their masters!  Who is there, unless inured to savage cruelties, that can hear of the inhuman punishments daily inflicted upon the unfortunate blacks, without feeling for them?  Can a man who calls himself a Christian, coolly and deliberately tie up, thumb-screw, torture with pincers, and beat unmercifully a poor slave, for perhaps a trifling neglect of duty?—­p. 14.

TESTIMONY OF HON.  JOHN RANDOLPH, OF ROANOKE—­A SLAVEHOLDER.

In one of his Congressional speeches, Mr. R. says:  “Avarice alone can drive, as it does drive, this infernal traffic, and the wretched victims of it, like so many post-horses whipped to death in a mail coach.  Ambition has its cover-sluts in the pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war; but where are the trophies of avarice? The hand-cuff; the manacle, the blood-stained cowhide!”

MAJOR STODDARD, of the United States’ army, who took possession of Louisiana in behalf of the United States, under the cession of 1804, in his Sketches of Louisiana, page 332, says: 

“The feelings of humanity are outraged—­the most odious tyranny exercised in a land of freedom, and hunger and nakedness prevail amidst plenty. * * * Cruel, and even unusual punishments are daily inflicted on these wretched creatures, enfeebled with hunger, labor and the lash.  The scenes of misery and distress constantly witnessed along the coast of the Delta, [of the Mississippi,] the wounds and lacerations occasioned by demoralized masters and overseers, torture the feelings of the passing stranger, and wring blood from the heart.”

Though only the third of the following series of resolutions is directly relevant to the subject now under consideration, we insert the other resolutions, both because they are explanatory of the third, and also serve to reveal the public sentiment of Indiana, at the date of the resolutions.  As a large majority of the citizens of Indiana at that time, were natives of slave states, they well knew the actual condition of the slaves.

1.  “RESOLVED UNANIMOUSLY, by the Legislative Council and House of Representatives of Indiana Territory, that a suspension of the sixth article of compact between the United States and the territories and states north west of the river Ohio, passed the 13th day of January, 1783, for the term of ten years, would be highly advantageous to the territory, and meet the approbation of at least nine-tenths of the good citizens of the same.”

2.  “RESOLVED UNANIMOUSLY, that the abstract question of liberty and slavery, is not considered as involved in a suspension of the said article, inasmuch as the number of slaves in the United States would not be augmented by the measure.”