[27]. General Ullmann writes from New Orleans, June 6, 1863, to Governor Andrew: “Every man (freed negro) presenting himself to be recruited, strips to the skin. My surgeons report to me that not one in fifteen is free from marks of severe lashing. More than one half are rejected because of disability from lashing with whips, and the biting of dogs on calves and thighs. It is frightful. Hundreds have welts on their backs as large as one of your largest fingers.”
[28]. Abercrombie relates an authenticated case of the same kind. A woodman, while employed with his axe, was hit on the head by a falling tree. He remained in a semi-comatose state for a whole year. On being trepanned, he uttered an exclamation which was found to be the completion of the sentence he had been in the act of uttering when struck twelve months before.
[29]. Among the foul records the Rebellion has unearthed is one, found at Alexandria, La., being a stray leaf from the diary of an overseer in that vicinity, in the year 1847. It chronicles the whippings of slaves from April 20 to May 21. Of thirty-nine whippings during that period, nineteen were of females. We give a few extracts from this precious and authentic document:—
“April 20. Whipped Adam for cutting cotton too wide. Nat, for thinning cotton.—21. Adaline and Clem, for being behind.—24. Esther, for leaving child out in yard to let it cry.—27. Adaline, for being slow getting out of quarters.—28. Daniel, for not having cobs taken out of horse-trough.—May 1. Anna, Jo, Hannah, Sarah, Jim, and Jane, for not thinning corn right. Clem, for being too long thinning one row of corn. Esther, for not being out of quarters quick enough.—10. Adaline, for being last one out with row.—15. Esther, for leaving grass in cotton.—17. Peggy, for not hoeing as much cane as she ought to last week.—18. Polly, for not hoeing faster.—20. Martha. Esther, and Sarah, for jawing about row, while I was gone.—21. Polly, for not handling her hoe faster.”
A United States officer from Cambridge, Mass., sent home this stray leaf, and it was originally published in the Cambridge Chronicle.
[30]. See Chapter XII. page 112.
[31]. The names and the facts are real. See Harper’s Weekly, July 4, 1868.
[32]. Mr. W.S. Grayson of Mississippi writes, in De Bow’s Review (August, 1860): “Civil liberty has been the theme of praise among men, and most wrongfully. This is the infatuation of our age.” And Mr. George Fitzhugh of Virginia writes: “Men are never efficient in military matters, or in industrial pursuits, until wholly deprived of their liberty. Loss of liberty is no disgrace.”
[33]. Testimony of Mrs. Fanny Kemble to facts within her knowledge.
[34]. Late member of Congress from Texas. In his speech in New York (1862) he said: “I know that the loyalists of Texas have died deaths not heard of since the dark ages until now; not only hunted and shot, murdered upon their own thresholds, but tied up and scalded to death with boiling water; torn asunder by wild horses fastened to their feet; whole neighborhoods of men exterminated, and their wives and children driven away.”