MR. MOORE, of VIRGINIA, in his speech before the Legislature of that state, Jan. 15, 1832, says: "It must be confessed, that although the treatment of our slaves is in the general, as mild and humane as it can be, that it must always happen, that there will be found hundreds of individuals, who, owing either to the natural ferocity of their dispositions, or to the effects of intemperance, will be guilty of cruelty and barbarity towards their slaves, which is almost intolerable, and at which humanity revolts."
TESTIMONY OF B. SWAIN, ESQ., OF NORTH CAROLINA.
"Let any man of spirit and feeling, for a moment cast his thoughts over this land of slave—think of the nakedness of some, the hungry yearnings of others, the flowing tears and heaving sighs of parting relations, the wailings and wo, the bloody cut of the keen lash, and the frightful scream that rends the very skies—and all this to gratify ambition, lust, pride, avarice, vanity, and other depraved feelings of the human heart.... THE WORST IS NOT GENERALLY KNOWN. Were all the miseries, the horrors of slavery, to burst at once into view, a peal of seven-fold thunder could scarce strike greater alarm."—See "Swain's Address," 1830.
TESTIMONY OF DR. JAMES C. FINLEY,
Son of Dr. Finley, one of the founders of the Colonization Society, and brother of R.S. Finley, agent of the American Colonization Society. Dr. J.C. Finley was formerly one of the editors of the Western Medical Journal, at Cincinnati, and is well known in the west as utterly hostile to immediate abolition.
"In almost the last conversation I had with you before I left Cincinnati, I promised to give you some account of some scenes of atrocious cruelty towards slaves, which I witnessed while I lived at the south. I almost regret having made the promise, for not only are they so atrocious that you will with difficulty believe them, but I also fear that they will have the effect of driving you into that abolitionism, upon the borders of which you have been so long hesitating. The people of the north are ignorant of the horrors of slavery—of the atrocities which it commits upon the unprotected slave. * * *
"I do not know that any thing could be gained by particularizing the scenes of horrible barbarity, which fell under my observation during my short residence in one of the wealthiest, most intelligent, and most moral parts of Georgia. Their number and atrocity are such, that I am confident they would gain credit with none but abolitionists. Every thing will be conveyed in the remark, that in a state of society calculated to foster the worst passions of our nature, the slave derives no protection either from law or public opinion, and that ALL the cruelties which the Russians are reported to have acted towards the Poles, after their late subjugation, ARE SCENES OF EVERY-DAY OCCURRENCE in the southern states. This statement, incredible as it may seem, falls short, very far short of the truth."
The foregoing is extracted from a letter written by Dr. Finley to Rev. Asa Mahan, his former pastor, then of Cincinnati, now President of Oberlin Seminary.
TESTIMONY OF REV. WILLIAM T. ALLAN, OF ILLINOIS, Son of a Slaveholder, Rev. Dr. Allan of Huntsville, Ala.
"At our house it is so common to hear their (the slaves') screams, that we think nothing of it: and lest any one should think that in general the slaves are well treated, let me be distinctly understood:—cruelty is the rule, and kindness the exception."