"Mr. Peter Vanarsdale, an elder of the Presbyterian church in Carrollton, formerly from Kentucky, told me, the other day, that a Mrs. Burford, in the neighborhood of Harrodsburg, Kentucky, had separated a woman and her children from their husband and father, taking them into another state. Mrs. B. was a member of the Presbyterian Church. The bereaved husband and father was also a professor of religion.
"Mr. V. told me of a slave woman who had lost her son, separated from her by public sale. In the anguish of her soul, she gave vent to her indignation freely, and perhaps harshly. Sometime after, she wished to become a member of the church. Before they received her, she had to make humble confession for speaking as she had done. Some of the elders that received her, and required the confession, were engaged is selling the son from his mother."
The following communication from the Rev. WILLIAM BARDWELL, of Sandwich, Massachusetts, has just been published in Zion's Watchman, New York city:
Mr. Editor:—The following fact was given me last evening, from the pen of a shipmaster, who has traded in several of the principal ports in the south. He is a man of unblemished character, a member of the M.E. Church in this place, and familiarly known in this town. The facts were communicated to me last fall in a letter to his wife, with a request that she would cause them to be published. I give verbatim, as they were written from the letter by brother Perry's own hand while I was in his house.
"A Methodist preacher, Wm. Whitby by name, who married in Bucksville, S.C., and by marriage came into possession of some slaves, in July, 1838, was about moving to another station to preach, and wished, also, to move his family and slaves to Tennessee, much against the will of the slaves, one of which, to get clear from him, ran into the woods after swimming a brook. The parson took after him with his gun, which, however, got wet and missed fire, when he ran to a neighbor for another gun, with the intention, as he said, of killing him: he did not, however, catch or kill him; he chained another for fear of his running away also. The above particulars were related to me by William Whitby himself. THOMAS C. PERRY. March 3, 1839."
"I find by examining the minutes of the S.C. Conference, that there is such a preacher in the Conference, and brother Perry further stated to me that he was well acquainted with him, and if this statement was published, and if it could be known where he was since the last Conference, he wished a paper to be sent him containing the whole affair. He also stated to me, verbally, that the young man he attempted to shoot was about nineteen years of age, and had been shut up in a corn-house, and in the attempt of Mr. Whitby to chain him, he broke down the door and made his escape as above mentioned, and that Mr. W. was under the necessity of hiring him out for one year, with the risk of his employer's getting him. Brother Perry conversed with one of the slaves, who was so old that he thought it not profitable to remove so far, and had been sold; he informed him of all the above circumstances, and said, with tears, that he thought he had been so faithful as to be entitled to liberty, but instead of making him free, he had sold him to another master, besides parting one husband and wife from those ties rendered a thousand times dearer by an infant child which was torn for ever from the husband.
WILLIAM BARDWELL.
Sandwich, Mass., March 4, 1839."
Mr. WILLIAM POE, till recently a slaveholder in Virginia, now an elder in the Presbyterian Church at Delhi, Ohio, gives the following testimony:—
"An elder in the Presbyterian Church in Lynchburg had a most faithful servant, whom he flogged severely and sent him to prison, and had him confined as a felon a number of days, for being saucy. Another elder of the same church, an auctioneer, habitually sold slaves at his stand—very frequently parted families—would often go into the country to sell slaves on execution and otherwise; when remonstrated with, he justified himself, saying, 'it was his business;' the church also justified him on the same ground.
"A Doctor Duval, of Lynchburg, Va. got offended with a very faithful, worthy servant, and immediately sold him to a negro trader, to be taken to New Orleans; Duval still keeping the wife of the man as his slave. This Duval was a professor of religion."