"The Rev. Mr. M——, now of the Huntingdon Presbytery, after an absence of many months, was about visiting his old friends on what is commonly called the 'Eastern Shore.' Late in the afternoon, on his journey, he called at the house of Rev. A.C. of P——town, Md. With this brother he had been long acquainted. Just at that juncture Mr. C. was about proceeding to whip a colored female, who was his slave. She was firmly tied to a post in FRONT of his dwelling-house. The arrival of a clerical visitor at such a time, occasioned a temporary delay in the execution of Mr. C's purpose. But the delay was only temporary; for not even the presence of such a guest could destroy the bloody design. The guest interceded with all the mildness yet earnestness of a brother and new visitor. But all in vain, 'the woman had been saucy and must be punished.' The cowhide was accordingly produced, and the Rev. Mr. C., a large and very stout man, applied it 'manfully' on 'woman's' bare and 'shrinking flesh.' I say bare, because you know that the slave women generally have but three or four inches of the arm near the shoulder covered, and the neck is left entirely exposed. As the cowhide moved back and forward, striking right and left, on the head, neck and arms, at every few strokes the sympathizing guest would exclaim, 'O, brother C. desist' But brother C. pursued his brutal work, till, after inflicting about sixty lashes, the woman was found to be suffused with blood on the hinder part of her neck, and under her frock between the shoulders. Yet this Rev. gentleman is well esteemed in the church—was, three or four years since, moderator of the synod of Philadelphia, and yet walks abroad, feeling himself unrebuked by law or gospel. Ah, sir does not this narration give fearful force to the query—What has the church to do with slavery?' Comment on the facts is unnecessary, yet allow me to conclude by saying, that it is my opinion such occurrences are not rare in the south.
J.N."
REV. CHARLES STEWART RENSHAW, of Quincy, Illinois, in a recent letter, speaking of his residence, for a period, in Kentucky, says—
"In a conversation with Mr. Robert Willis, he told me that his negro girl had run away from him some time previous. He was convinced that she was lurking round, and he watched for her. He soon found the place of her concealment, drew her from it, got a rope, and tied her hands across each other, then threw the rope over a beam in the kitchen, and hoisted her up by the wrists; 'and,' said he, 'I whipped her there till I made the lint fly, I tell you.' I asked him the meaning of making 'the lint fly,' and he replied, 'till the blood flew.' I spoke of the iniquity and cruelty of slavery, and of its immediate abandonment. He confessed it an evil, but said, 'I am a colonizationist—I believe in that scheme.' Mr. Willis is a teacher of sacred music, and a member of the Presbyterian Church in Lexington, Kentucky."
Mr. R. speaking of the PRESBYTERIAN MINISTER and church where he resided, says:
"The minister and all the church members held slaves. Some were treated kindly, others harshly. There was not a shade of difference between their slaves and those of their infidel neighbors, either in their physical, intellectual, or moral state: in some cases they would suffer in the comparison.
"In the kitchen of the minister of the church, a slave man was living in open adultery with a slave woman, who was a member of the church, with an 'assured hope' of heaven—whilst the man's wife was on the minister's farm in Fayette county. The minister had to bring a cook down from his farm to the place in which he was preaching. The choice was between the wife of the man and this church member. He left the wife, and brought the church member to the adulterer's bed.
"A METHODIST PREACHER last fall took a load of produce down the river. Amongst other things he took down five slaves. He sold them at New Orleans—he came up to Natchez—bought seven there—and took them down and sold them also. Last March he came up to preach the Gospel again. A number of persons on board the steamboat (the Tuscarora.) who had seen him in the slave-shambles in Natchez and New Orleans, and now, for the first time, found him to be a preacher, had much sport at the expense of 'the fine old preacher who dealt in slaves.'
A non-professor of religion, in Campbell county, Ky. sold a female and two children to a Methodist professor, with the proviso that they should not leave that region of country. The slave-driver came, and offered $5 more for the woman than he had given, and he sold her. She is now in the lower country, and her orphan babes are in Kentucky.
"I was much shocked once, to see a Presbyterian elder's wife call a little slave to her to kiss her feet. At first the boy hesitated—but the command being repeated in tones not to be misunderstood, be approached timidly, knelt, and kissed her foot."