In a speech before the Maryland House of Delegates, in 1789, Mr. P. calls slavery in that state, "a speaking picture of abominable oppression;" and adds: "It will not do thus to ... act like unrelenting tyrants, perpetually sermonizing it with liberty as our text, and actual oppression for our commentary. Is she [Maryland] not ... the foster mother of petty despots,—the patron of wanton oppression?"
Extract from a speech of Mr. RICE, in the Convention for forming the Constitution of Kentucky, in 1790:
"The master may, and often does, inflict upon him all the severity of punishment the human body is capable of bearing."
President Edwards, the Younger, in a sermon before the Connecticut Abolition Society, 1791, says:
"From these drivers, for every imagined, as well as real neglect or want of exertion, they receive the lash—the smack of which is all day long in the ears of those who are on the plantation or in the vicinity; and it is used with such dexterity and severity, as not only to lacerate the skin, but to tear out small portions of the flesh at almost every stroke.
"This is the general treatment of the slaves. But many individuals suffer still more severely. Many, many are knocked down; some have their eyes beaten out: some have an arm or a leg broken, or chopped off; and many, for a very small, or for no crime at all, have been beaten to death, merely to gratify the fury of an enraged master or overseer."
Extract from an oration, delivered at Baltimore, July 4, 1797, by GEORGE BUCHANAN, M.D., member of the American Philosophical Society.
Their situation (the slaves') is insupportable; misery inhabits their cabins, and pursues them in the field. Inhumanly beaten, they often fall sacrifices to the turbulent tempers of their masters! Who is there, unless inured to savage cruelties, that can hear of the inhuman punishments daily inflicted upon the unfortunate blacks, without feeling for them? Can a man who calls himself a Christian, coolly and deliberately tie up, thumb-screw, torture with pincers, and beat unmercifully a poor slave, for perhaps a trifling neglect of duty?—p. 14.
TESTIMONY OF HON. JOHN RANDOLPH, OF ROANOKE—A SLAVEHOLDER.
In one of his Congressional speeches, Mr. R. says: "Avarice alone can drive, as it does drive, this infernal traffic, and the wretched victims of it, like so many post-horses whipped to death in a mail coach. Ambition has its cover-sluts in the pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war; but where are the trophies of avarice? The hand-cuff; the manacle, the blood-stained cowhide!"