The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus

by American Anti-Slavery Society

Mr. GEORGE A. AVERY, of Rochester, New York, who resided four years in Virginia, testifies as follows:

"I know a local Methodist minister, a man of talents, and popular as a preacher, who took his negro girl into his barn, in order to whip her—and she was brought out a corpse! His friends seemed to think this of so little importance to his ministerial standing, that although I lived near him about three years, I do not recollect to have heard them apologize for the deed, though I recollect having heard ONE of his neighbors allege this fact as a reason why he did not wish to hear him preach."

Notwithstanding the mass of testimony which has been presented establishing the fact that in the 'public opinion' of the South the slaves find no protection, some may still claim that the 'public opinion' exhibited by the preceding facts is not that of the highest class of society at the South, and in proof of this assertion, refer to the fact, that 'Negro Brokers,' Negro Speculators, Negro Auctioneers, and Negro Breeders, &c., are by that class universally despised and avoided, as are all who treat their slaves with cruelty.

To this we reply, that, if all claimed by the objector were true, it could avail him nothing for 'public opinion' is neither made nor unmade by 'the first class of society.' That class produces in it, at most, but slight modifications; those who belong to it have generally a 'public opinion,' within their own circle which has rarely more, either of morality or mercy than the public opinion of the mass, and is, at least, equally heartless and more intolerant. As to the estimation in which 'speculators,' 'soul drivers,' &c. are held, we remark, that, they are not despised because they trade in slaves but because they are working men, all such are despised by slaveholders. White drovers who go with droves of swine and cattle from the free states to the slave states, and Yankee pedlars, who traverse the south, and white day-laborers are, in the main, equally despised, or, if negro-traders excite more contempt than drovers, pedlars, and day-laborers, it is because, they are, as a class more ignorant and vulgar, men from low families and boors in their manners. Ridiculous to suppose, that a people, who have, by law, made men articles of trade equally with swine, should despise men-drovers and traders, more than hog-drovers and traders. That they are not despised because it is their business to trade in human beings and bring them to market, is plain from the fact that when some 'gentleman of property and standing' and of a 'good family' embarks in a negro speculation, and employs a dozen 'soul drivers' to traverse the upper country, and drive to the south coffles of slaves, expending hundreds of thousands in his wholesale purchases, he does not lose caste. It is known in Alabama, that Mr. Erwin, son-in-law of the Hon. Henry Clay, and brother of J.P. Erwin, formerly postmaster, and late mayor of the city of Nashville, laid the foundation of a princely fortune in the slave-trade, carried on from the Northern Slave States to the Planting South; that the Hon. H. Hitchcock, brother-in-law of Mr. E., and since one of the judges of the Supreme Court of Alabama, was interested with him in the traffic; and that a late member of the Kentucky Senate (Col. Wall) not only carried on the same business, a few years ago, but accompanied his droves in person down the Mississippi. Not as the driver, for that would be vulgar drudgery, beneath a gentleman, but as a nabob in state, ordering his understrappers.

It is also well known that President Jackson was a 'soul driver,' and that even so late as the year before the commencement of the last war, he bought up a coffle of slaves and drove them down to Louisiana for sale.

Thomas N. Gadsden, Esq. the principal slave auctioneer in Charleston, S.C. is of one of the first families in the state, and moves in the very highest class of society there. He is a descendant of the distinguished General Gadsden of revolutionary memory, the most prominent southern member in the Continental Congress of 1765, and afterwards elected lieutenant governor and then governor of the state. The Rev. Dr. Gadsden, rector of St. Phillip's Church, Charleston, and the Rev. Phillip Gadsden, both prominent Episcopal clergymen in South Carolina, and Colonel James Gadsden of the United States army, after whom a county in Florida was recently named, are all brothers of this Thomas N. Gadsden, Esq. the largest slave auctioneer in the state, under whose hammer, men, women and children go off by thousands; its stroke probably sunders daily, husbands and wives, parents and children, brothers and sisters, perhaps to see each other's faces no more. Now who supply the auction table of this Thomas N. Gadsden, Esq. with its loads of human merchandize? These same detested 'soul drivers' forsooth! They prowl through the country, buy, catch, and fetter them, and drive their chained coffles up to his stand, where Thomas N. Gadsden, Esq. knocks them off to the highest bidder, to Ex-Governor Butler perhaps, or to Ex-Governor Hayne, or to Hon. Robert Barnwell Rhett, or to his own reverend brother, Dr. Gadsden. Now this high born, wholesale soul-seller doubtless despises the retail 'soul-drivers' who give him their custom, and so does the wholesale grocer, the drizzling tapster who sneaks up to his counter for a keg of whiskey to dole out under a shanty in two cent glasses; and both for the same reason.

The plea that the 'public opinion' among the highest classes of society at the south is mild and considerate towards the slaves, that they do not overwork, underfeed, neglect when old and sick, scantily clothe, badly lodge, and half shelter their slaves; that they do not barbarously flog, load with irons, imprison in the stocks, brand and maim them; hunt them when runaway with dogs and guns, and sunder by force and forever the nearest kindred—is shown, by almost every page of this work, to be an assumption, not only utterly groundless, but directly opposed to masses of irrefragable evidence. If the reader will be at the pains to review the testimony recorded on the foregoing pages he will find that a very large proportion of the atrocities detailed were committed, not by the most ignorant and lowest classes of society, but by persons 'of property and standing,' by masters and mistresses belonging to the 'upper classes,' by persons in the learned professions, by civil, judicial, and military officers, by the literati, by the fashionable elite and persons of more than ordinary 'respectability' and external morality—large numbers of whom are professors of religion.

It will be recollected that the testimony of Sarah M. Grimké, and Angelina G. Weld, was confined exclusively to the details of slavery as exhibited in the highest classes of society, mainly in Charleston, S.C. See their testimony pp. 22-24 and 52-57. The former has furnished us with the following testimony in addition to that already given.

"Nathaniel Heyward of Combahee, S.C., one of the wealthiest planters in the state, stated, in conversation with some other planters who were complaining of the idle and lazy habits of their slaves, and the difficulty of ascertaining whether their sickness was real or pretended, and the loss they suffered from their frequent absence on this account from their work, said, 'I never lose a day's work: it is an established rule on my plantations that the tasks of all the sick negroes shall be done by those who are well in addition to their own. By this means a vigilant supervision is kept up by the slaves over each other, and they take care that nothing but real sickness keeps any one out of the field.' I spent several winters in the neighborhood of Nathaniel Heyward's plantations, and well remember his character as a severe task master. I was present when the above statement was made."

The cool barbarity of such a regulation is hardly surpassed by the worst edicts of the Roman Caligula—especially when we consider that the plantations of this man were in the neighborhood of the Combahee river, one of the most unhealthy districts in the low country of South Carolina; further, that large numbers of his slaves worked in the rice marshes, or 'swamps' as they are called in that state—and that during six months of the year, so fatal to health is the malaria of the swamps in that region that the planters and their families invariably abandon their plantations, regarding it as downright presumption to spend a single day upon them 'between the frosts' of the early spring and the last of November.