[42]. “Reverently, we feel that our Confederacy is a God-sent missionary to the nations, with great truths to preach.”—Richmond Enquirer.
[43]. This yoke was on exhibition several months at Williams and Everett’s, Washington Street, Boston, it having been sent by Governor Andrew with a letter, the original of which we have before us while we write. It bears date September 10th, 1863. It says of this yoke (which we have held in our hands), that it “was cut from the neck of a slave girl” who had worn it “for three weary months. An officer of Massachusetts Volunteers, whose letter I enclose to you, sent me this memento,” &c. That officer’s original letter, signed S. Tyler Read, Captain Third Massachusetts Cavalry, is also before us. He writes to the Governor of Massachusetts, that, having been sent with a detachment of troops down the river to search suspected premises on the plantation of Madame Coutreil, his attention was attracted by a small house, closed tightly, and about nine or ten feet square. “I demanded,” writes Captain Read, “the keys, and after unlocking double doors found myself in the entrance of a dark and loathsome dungeon. ‘In Heaven’s name, what have you here?’ I exclaimed to the slave mistress. ‘O, only a little girly—she runned away!’ I peered into the darkness, and was able to discover, sitting at one end of the room upon a low stool, a girl about eighteen years of age. She had this iron torture riveted about her neck, where it had rusted through the skin, and lay corroding apparently upon the flesh. Her head was bowed upon her hands, and she was almost insensible from emaciation and immersion in the foul air of her dungeon. She was quite white.... I had the girl taken to the city, where this torture was removed from her neck by a blacksmith, who cut the rivet, and she was subsequently made free by military authority.”
See in the Atlantic Monthly (July, 1863) a paper entitled “Our General,” from the pen of one who served as Deputy Provost Marshal in New Orleans. His facts are corroborated both by General Butler and Governor Shepley, who took pains to authenticate them. A girl, “a perfect blonde, her hair of a very pretty, light shade of brown, and perfectly straight,” had been publicly whipped by her master (who was also her father), and then “forced to marry a colored man.” We spare our readers the mention of the most loathsome fact in the narrative.
Another case is stated by the same writer. A mulatto girl, the slave of one Landry, was brought to General Butler. She had been brutally scourged by her master. He confessed to the castigation, but pleaded that she had tried to get her freedom. The poor girl’s back had been flayed “until the quivering flesh resembled a fresh beefsteak scorched on a gridiron.” It was declared by influential citizens, who interceded for him, that Landry was (we quote the recorded words) “not only a high-toned gentleman, but a person of unusual amiability of character.” General Butler freed the girl, and compelled the high-toned Landry to pay over to her the sum of five hundred dollars.
[44]. Actual words of a negro preacher, taken down on the spot by a hearer.
[45]. If there is divination (clairvoyance), there must be gods (spirits).
[46]. See Mr. Jefferson Davis’s proclamation for a fast, March, 1863.
[47]. These quotations are genuine, as many newspaper readers will recollect.
[48]. The case seems to have been precisely parallel to that of Spencer Kellogg Brown, hung in Richmond, September 25th, 1863, as a spy. On the 18th of that month, Brown told the Rev. William G. Scandlin of Massachusetts (see the latter’s published letter), that they had kept him there in prison “until all his evidence had been sent away, allowed him but fifteen hours to prepare for his defence, and denied him the privilege of counsel.” Brown was captured by guerillas, not while he was acting as a spy, but while returning from destroying a rebel ferry-boat near Port Hudson, which he had done under the order of Captain Porter. The hanging of this man was as shameless a murder as was ever perpetrated by Thugs. But Slavery, disappointed in the hanging of Captains Sawyer and Flynn, was yelling lustily for a Yankee to hang; and Jeff Davis was not man enough to say “No.”