“A negro woman was found chained, covered with bruises and wounds from severe flogging.—All the apartments were then forced open. In a room on the ground floor, two more were found chained, and in a deplorable condition. Up stairs and in the garret, four more were found chained; some so weak as to be unable to walk, and all covered with wounds and sores. One mulatto boy declares himself to have been chained for five months, being fed daily with only a handful of meal, and receiving every morning the most cruel treatment.”
The New Orleans Courier says:—
“We saw one of these miserable beings.—He had a large hole in his head—his body, from head to foot, was covered with scars and filled with worms.”
The New Orleans Mercantile Advertiser says:
“Seven poor unfortunate slaves were found—some chained to the floor, others with chains around their necks, fastened to the ceiling; and one poor old man, upwards of sixty years of age, chained hand and foot, and made fast to the floor, in a kneeling position. His head bore the appearance of having been beaten until it was broken, and the worms were actually to be seen making a feast of his brains!! A woman had her back literally cooked (if the expression may be used) with the lash; the very bones might be seen projecting through the skin!”
The New York Sun, of Feb. 21, 1837, contains the following:—
“Two negroes, runaways from Virginia, were overtaken a few days since near Johnstown, Cambria co. Pa. when the persons in pursuit called out for them to stop or they would shoot them.—One of the negroes turned around and said, he would die before he would be taken, and at the moment received a rifle ball through his knee: the other started to run, but was brought to the ground by a ball being shot in his back. After receiving the above wounds they made battle with their pursuers, but were captured and brought into Johnstown. It is said that the young men who shot them had orders to take them dead or alive.”
Mr. M.M. SHAFTER, of Townsend, Vermont, recently a graduate of the Wesleyan University at Middletown, Connecticut, makes the following statement:
“Some of the events of the Southampton, Va. insurrection were narrated to me by Mr. Benjamin W. Britt, from Riddicksville, N.C. Mr. Britt claimed the honor of having shot a black on that occasion, for the crime of disobeying Mr. Britt’s imperative ‘Stop.’ And Mr. Ashurst, of Edenton, Georgia, told me that a neighbor of his ’fired at a likely negro boy of his mother,’ because the said boy encroached upon his premises.”
Mr. DAVID HAWLEY, a class leader in the Methodist Episcopal Church at St. Albans, Licking county, Ohio, who moved from Kentucky to Ohio in 1831, certifies as follows:—