Henry H. Snow, Willard Keyes. 
Rev. C. Stewart Renshaw.”

“My informant spent thirty years of his life in Kentucky and Missouri.  Whilst in Kentucky he resided in Hardin co.  I noted down his testimony very nearly in his own words, which will account for their evidence-like form.  On the general condition of the slaves in Kentucky, through Hardin co., he said, their houses were very uncomfortable, generally without floors, other than the earth:  many had puncheon floors, but he never remembers to have seen a plank floor.  In regard to clothing they were very badly off.  In summer they cared little for clothing; but in winter they almost froze.  Their rags might hide their nakedness from the sun in summer, but would not protect them from the cold in winter.  Their bed-clothes were tattered rags, thrown into a corner by day, and drawn before the fire by night.  ‘The only thing,’ said he, ’to which I can compare them, in winter, is stock without a shelter.’

“He made the following comparison between the condition of slaves in Kentucky and Missouri.  So far as he was able to compare them, he said, that in Missouri the slaves had better quarters-but are not so well clad, and are more severely punished than in Kentucky.  In both states, the slaves are huddled together, without distinction of sex, into the same quarter, till it is filled, then another is built; often two or three families in a log hovel, twelve feet square.

“It is proper to state, that the sphere of my informant’s observation was mainly in the region of Hardin co., Kentucky, and the eastern part of Missouri, and not through those states generally.

“Whilst at St. Louis, a number of years ago, as he was going to work with Mr. Henry Males, and another carpenter, they heard groans from a barn by the road-side:  they stopped, and looking through the cracks of the barn, saw a negro bound hand and foot to a post, so that his toes just touched the ground; and his master, Captain Thorpe, was inflicting punishment; he had whipped him till exhausted,—­rested himself, and returned again to the punishment.  The wretched sufferer was in a most pitiable condition, and the warm blood and dry dust of the barn had formed a mortar up to his instep.  Mr. Males jumped the fence, and remonstrated so effectually with Capt.  Thorpe, that he ceased the punishment.  It was six weeks before that slave could put on his shirt!

“John Mackey, a rich slaveholder, lived near Clarksville, Pike co., Missouri, some years since.  He whipped his slave Billy, a boy fourteen years old, till he was sick and stupid; he then sent him home.  Then, for his stupidity, whipped him again, and fractured his skull with an axe-helve.  He buried him away in the woods; dark words were whispered, and the body was disinterred.  A coroner’s inquest was held, and Mr. R. Anderson, the coroner, brought in a verdict of death from fractured skull, occasioned by blows from an axe-handle, inflicted by John Mackey.  The case was brought into court, but Mackey was rich, and his murdered victim was his SLAVE; after expending about $500 be walked free.