TESTIMONY OF REV. GEORGE WHITEFIELD.
In a letter written by him in Georgia, and addressed to the slaveholders of Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina and Georgia, in 1739.—See Benezet's "Caution to Great Britain and her Colonies."
"As I lately passed through your provinces on my way hither, I was sensibly touched with a fellow-feeling of the miseries of the poor negroes.
"Sure I am, it is sinful to use them as bad, nay worse than if they were brutes; and whatever particular exceptions there may be, (as I would charitably hope there are some,) I fear the generality of you that own negroes are liable to such a charge. Not to mention what numbers have been given up to the inhuman usage of cruel taskmasters, who by their unrelenting scourges, have ploughed their backs and made long furrows, and at length brought them to the grave!
"The blood of them, spilt for these many years, in your respective provinces, will ascend up to heaven against you!" The following is the testimony of the celebrated JOHN WOOLMAN, an eminent minister of the Society of Friends, who traveled extensively in the slave state. We copy it from a "Memoir of JOHN WOOLMAN, chiefly extracted from a Journal of his Life and Travels." It was published in Philadelphia, by the "Society of Friends."
"The following reflections, were written in 1757, while he was traveling on a religious account among slaveholders."
"Many of the white people in these provinces, take little or no care of negro marriages; and when negroes marry, after their own way, some make so little account of those marriages, that, with views of outward interest, they often part men from their wives, by selling them far asunder; which is common when estates are sold by executors at vendue.
"Many whose labor is heavy, being followed at their business in the field by a man with a whip, hired for that purpose,—have, in common, little else allowed them but one peck of Indian corn and some salt for one week, with a few potatoes. (The potatoes they commonly raise by their labor on the first day of the week.) The correction ensuing on their disobedience to overseers, or slothfulness in business, is often very severe, and sometimes desperate. Men and women have many times scarce clothes enough to hide their nakedness—and boys and girls, ten and twelve years old, are often quite naked among their masters' children. Some use endeavors to instruct those (negro children) they have in reading; but in common, this is not only neglected, but disapproved."—p. 12.
TESTIMONY OF THE 'MARYLAND JOURNAL AND BALTIMORE ADVERTISER,' OF MAY 30, 1788.
"In the ordinary course of the business of the country, the punishment of relations frequently happens on the same farm, and in view of each other: the father often sees his beloved son—the son his venerable sire—the mother her much loved daughter—the daughter her affectionate parent—the husband sees the wife of his bosom, and she the husband of her affection, cruelly bound up without delicacy or mercy, and without daring to interpose in each other's behalf, and punished with all the extremity of incensed rage, and all the rigor of unrelenting severity. Let us reverse the case, and suppose it ours: ALL IS SILENT HORROR!"
TESTIMONY OF THE HON. WILLIAM PINCKNEY, OF MARYLAND.