“I cannot,” says the doctor, “forget my feelings on visiting a hospital belonging to the plantation of a gentleman highly esteemed for his virtues, and whose manners and conversation expressed much benevolence and conscientiousness.  When I entered with him the hospital, the first object on which my eye fell was a young woman very ill, probably approaching death.  She was stretched on the floor.  Her head rested on something like a pillow, but her body and limbs were extended on the hard boards.  The owner, I doubt not, had, at least, as much kindness as myself; but he was so used to see the slaves living without common comforts, that the idea of unkindness in the present instance did not enter his mind.”

Mr. GEORGE A. AVERY, an elder of a Presbyterian church in Rochester, N.Y. who resided some years in Virginia, says:—­

“On one occasion I was crossing the plantation and approaching the house of a friend, when I met him, rifle in hand, in pursuit of one of his negroes, declaring he would shoot him in a moment if he got his eye upon him.  It appeared that the slave had refused to be flogged, and ran off to avoid the consequences; and yet the generous hospitality of this man to myself, and white friends generally, scarcely knew any bounds.

“There were amongst my slaveholding friends and acquaintances, persons who were as humane and conscientious as men can be, and persist in the impious claim of property in a fellow being.  Still I can recollect but one instance of corporal punishment, whether the subject were male or female, in which the infliction was not on the bare back with the raw hide, or a similar instrument, the subject being tied during the operation to a post or tree.  The exception was under the following circumstances.  I had taken a walk with a friend on his plantation, and approaching his gang of slaves, I sat down whilst he proceeded to the spot where they were at work; and addressing himself somewhat earnestly to a female who was wielding the hoe, in a moment caught up what I supposed a tobacco stick, (a stick some three feet in length on which the tobacco, when out, is suspended to dry.) about the size of a man’s wrist, and laid on a number of blows furiously over her head.  The woman crouched, and seemed stunned with the blows, but presently recommenced the motion of her hoe.”

Dr. DAVID NELSON, a native of Tennessee, and late president of Marion College, Missouri, in a lecture at Northampton, Mass. in January, 1839, made the following statement:—­

“I remember a young lady who played well on the piano, and was very ready to weep over any fictitious tale of suffering.  I was present when one of her slaves lay on the floor in a high fever, and we feared she might not recover.  I saw that young lady stamp upon her with her feet; and the only remark her mother made was, ’I am afraid Evelina is too much prejudiced against poor Mary.’”