The treatment of slaves is mildest near the borders, where the free and slave states join:  it becomes more severe, the farther we go from the free states.  It is more severe in the west and south than where I lived.  The sale of slaves most frequently takes place from the milder to the severer parts:  there is great traffic in slaves in that direction, which is carried on by the speculators.  On the frontier between the slave and free States there is a guard; no colored person can go over a ferry without a pass.  By these regulations, and the great numbers of patrols, escape is made next to impossible.

Formerly slaves were allowed to have religious meetings of their own; but after the insurrection which I spoke of before, they were forbidden to meet even for worship.  Often they are flogged if they are found singing or praying at home.  They may go to the places of worship used by the whites; but they like their own meetings better.  My wife’s brother Isaac was a colored preacher.  A number of slaves went privately into a wood to hold meetings; when they were found out, they were flogged, and each was forced to tell who else was there.  Three were shot, two of whom were killed and the other was badly wounded.  For preaching to them, Isaac was flogged, and his back pickled; when it was nearly well, he was flogged and pickled again, and so on for some months; then his back was suffered to get well, and he was sold.  A little while before this, his wife was sold away with an infant at her breast; and out of six children, four had been sold away by one at a time.  On the way with his buyers he dropped down dead; his heart was broken.

Having thus narrated what has happened to myself, my relatives and near friends, I will add a few matters about slaves and colored people in general.

Slaves are under fear in every word they speak.  If, in their master’s kitchen, they let slip an expression of discontent, or a wish for freedom, it is often reported to the master or mistress by the children of the family who may be playing about:  severe flogging is often the consequence.

I have already said that it is forbidden by law to teach colored persons to read or write.  A few well-disposed white young persons, of the families to which the slaves belonged, have ventured to teach them, but they dare not let it be known they have done so.

The proprietors get new land cleared in this way.  They first ‘dead’ a piece of ground in the woods adjoining the plantation:  by ‘deading’ is meant killing the trees, by cutting a nick all round each, quite through the bark.  Out of this ground each colored person has a piece as large as he can tend after his other work is done; the women have pieces in like manner.  The slave works at night, cutting down the timber and clearing the ground; after it is cleared, he has it for his own use for two or three years, as may be agreed on.  As these new clearings lie between the woods and the old cultivated