When toil-worn and care-worn, when well-nigh disheartened from all this care and toil, I have invariably been sustained by the sympathy and kind words of my wife. Truly, in the language of Scripture, she is "an ever present help in time of need." When, saddened in spirit by a reflection that my brethren are still groaning in bondage, I have found—from her former situation as a slave, being equally a sufferer with myself—she could enter into my feelings and cheer me with hopes of the approaching time of their liberation.
By the advice of my wife I destroyed the advertisement of my master, thinking my safety was endangered by it. Had it been in my possession now, I would have given the form without the name in connection with it.
APPENDIX.
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EXTRACT FROM WELD'S AMERICAN SLAVERY AS IT IS.
In the 'Charleston (South Carolina) Mercury' of October 12, 1838, we find an advertisement of half a column, by a Dr. T. Stillman, setting forth the merits of another 'Medical Infirmary,' under his own special supervision, at No. 110 Church street, Charleston. The doctor, after inveighing loudly against 'men totally ignorant of medical science,' who flood the country with quack nostrums backed up by 'fabricated proofs of miraculous cures,' proceeds to enumerate the diseases to which his 'Infirmary' is open, and to which his practice will be mainly confined. Appreciating the importance of 'interesting cases,' as a stock in trade on which to commence his experiments, he copies the example of the medical professors, and advertises for them. But, either from a keener sense of justice, or more generosity, or greater confidence in his skill, or for some other reason, he proposes to buy up an assortment of damaged negroes, given over as incurable by others, and to make such his 'interesting cases,' instead of experimenting on those who are the 'property' of others.
Dr. Stillman closes his advertisement with the following notice:—
"To Planters and others.—Wanted, fifty negroes. Any person having sick negroes, considered incurable by their respective physicians, and wishing to dispose of them, Dr. S. will pay cash for negroes affected with scrofula or king's evil, confirmed hypocondriasm, apoplexy, diseases of the liver, kidneys, spleen, stomach and intestines, bladder and its appendages, diarrhœa, dysentery, &c. The highest cash price will be paid on application as above."
The absolute barbarism of a 'public opinion' which not only tolerates, but produces such advertisements as this, was outdone by nothing in the dark ages. If the reader has a heart of flesh, he can feel it without help, and if he has not, comment will not create it. The total indifference of slaveholders to such a cold-blooded proposition, their utter unconsciousness of the paralysis of heart, and death of sympathy, and every feeling of common humanity, for the slave, which it reveals, is enough of itself to show that the tendency of the spirit of slaveholding is, to kill in the soul whatever it touches. It has no eyes to see, nor ears to hear, nor mind to understand, nor heart to feel for its victims as human beings. To show that the above indication of the savage state is not an index of individual feeling, but of 'public opinion,' it is sufficient to say, that it appears to be a standing advertisement in the Charleston Mercury, the leading political paper of South Carolina, the organ of the Honorables John C. Calhoun, Robert Barnwell Rhett, Hugh S. Legare, and others regarded as the elite of her statesmen and literati. Besides, candidates for popular favor, like the doctor who advertises for the fifty 'incurables,' take special care to conciliate, rather than outrage, 'public opinion.' Is the doctor so ignorant of 'public opinion' in his own city, that he has unwittingly committed violence upon it in his advertisement? We trow not. The same 'public opinion' which gave birth to the advertisement of Dr. Stillman, and to those of the professors in both medical institutions, founded the Charleston 'Work-House,'—a soft name for a Moloch temple dedicated to torture, and reeking with blood in the midst of the city; to which masters and mistresses send their slaves of both sexes to be stripped, tied up, and cut with the lash till the blood and mangled flesh flow to their feet, or to be beaten and bruised with the terrible paddle, or forced to climb the tread-mill till nature sinks, or to experience other nameless torments.—See Weld's American Slavery As it Is, p. 171.