Peter. “I had as many friends in that region as about any other man, I reckon, and if it hadn’t been for one man, I should have got along very well; but oh! how cruel master was. As I was a tellin’ on you, we went on buildin’ the frame house, and in diggin’ the cellar. I was a holdin’ the scraper and master was drivin’, and a root catched the scraper and jerked me over under the horse’s heels, and he took the but end of his whip, and mauled me over the head; and says I, ‘master, I hold the scraper as well as I can, and I wish you’d git somebody that’s stronger than me, to do it.’
“‘Come up here,’ says he, as he jumps up out of the cellar, with a halter in his hand, ‘and I’ll give you somebody that’s strong ’nough for you.’ Well, I got up, and he makes me strip, and hug an apple tree, and then ties me round it, and whips me with his ox-goad, while I was stark naked, till he’d cut a good many gashes in my flesh, and the blood run down my heels in streams; and then he unties me, and kicks me down into the cellar to hold scraper agin. ☜
“At that, one of his hired men, who was a shovelin’, says, ‘Morehouse, you are too savage, to use your boy so, I swear!!’ Well, one word brought on another, till master orders him off of his premises. ‘Out of the cellar,’ says he, in a rage, for jist so soon as he reproved him, he biled like a pot, for you know if a body’s doin’ wrong, it makes ’em mad to be told on it. Well, out he got, and says he, as he jumps out on the bank, ‘now, Morehouse, if you are a man, come out here tu.’ But master darn’t do that, for he was a small man. ‘Then pay me!’ and master says, ‘I’ll be dam’d if I do.’ ‘Well,’ says the man, ‘I’ll put you in a way to pay me afore night.’ So it comes night, master rides up and pays him, and tries to hire him agin; but says he, ‘I wouldn’t work for sich a barbarous wretch, if you’d give me fifty dollars a day.’[[5]]
[5]. There are certain principles, developed in these facts, which the reader ought to notice. Abolitionists meet with opposition from the slaveholder, and his abettors, for the same reason that this man was cursed by the tyrant who had just lashed Peter! He was angry with the man, because he told him the truth. It excited all the malignity of a demon in his breast to be rebuked. He knew he was doing wrong, and conscience made the reproof a barbed arrow to his soul, and he raved because his pride was mortified, and he felt disturbed.—So is it now! The Abolitionists are opposed for the same reason.—They are the first body of men in America, who have depicted slavery—they have dissected the fiendish monster, and brought down the contempt of the world, who love freedom, upon the head of the southern slaveholder. They have poured light, like a stream of fire, upon the whole South, and disturbed the consciences of the buyers and sellers of souls. And we see the malignity of hell itself boiling out of the southern mouth, and southern press; and politicians and religious (?) editors, and ministers of the gospel, are all pressed into the vile and low-lived business of bolstering up tyrants upon their unholy thrones, and propping up the darkest, and blackest system of oppression that ever existed on earth. These men have not been needed before, their help was not called for;—for nothing was being done to break down slavery. The Colonization Society, met with a different fate at the South, and for this reason it was sustained by all slaveholders who knew the policy. It was the best friend the slaveholder ever had—it kept the consciences of the tyrants quiet—it was a healing plaster just large enough for the sore.—And some of the most distinguished slaveholders in the United States, some of them officers of the American Colonization Society, and the most liberal donors of its funds, told the author of this note, that, they considered the Society the firmest support slavery had in the world, for ‘twould keep the North and the South quiet about their peculiar institutions. “The Society,” said one of them, who was at the time a member of the United States Senate, “has carried away about three thousand or four thousand niggers in twenty years, and the increase has been over half a million. Now, Sir, I can afford, on selfish principles, to give ten thousand dollars a year to that Society, rather than have it go down; for when it goes down, slavery will go with it, and it will go down just as soon as it loses the confidence of the people of the North!!!!!!! ☜ Very good reason why slaveholders should support Colonization!!!!!! There is not the fain’test doubt in creation, that the great mass of the South wish slavery, under the circumstances, to continue; and they make war against the Abolitionists because they want it to stop, and are doing all they can to put it down; (for this is the definition of an Abolitionist;) just as the drunkard makes war upon the Temperance Reformation, because it strikes a blow at his idol; just as infidels oppose revivals, because they disturb their consciences, and make infidelity contemptible. Now, I hesitate not to say, that no system of principles, or measures, will ever do away with slavery, except that system which meets with the determined, and combined opposition of slaveholders, and those who are interested in sustaining the system. For the system that destroys slavery, must aim a deadly blow at selfishness, and this will excite malignity, and this will show itself out in the gall that is poured upon Abolitionists, from the cowardly and sophistical apologies of Pro-Slavery Princeton Divines, down to the hard, but not convincing arguments of brick-bats.
The truth is, that the South oppose Abolition, not because “it has put back emancipation,” as the New York Observer says,—for, in that case, its champions would be found south of “Mason’s and Dixon’s line,”—but, because Abolition has a direct, and decided, and tremendous influence in hurling the system of heathenish, and cruel oppression to the ground. But there are some, a noble, an immortal few, hearts in the South who are waiting for the consolation of Africa, who bless God for every prayer we offer, and for every convert we gain. And the prayers of every man, and woman, in the slaveholding states, who longs for the freedom of the slave, follow the Abolitionists, and contribute to the spread and triumph of our principles.
“By being exposed, and abused, and whipped, and almost starved and frozen to death, through the winter, in the spring I was took down with the typhus fever, and lay on a bed of straw, behind the back kitchen door, six months, almost dead; and the doctor come to see me every day, and finally says he to master, ‘if you want that boy to git well, you must give him a decenter place to lay than all that comes tu, for ’tain’t fit for a sick dog.’
“So the gals moved me up stairs, in their arms, and there I lay. They was kind to me durin’ my sickness, but master was very indifferent, and didn’t seem to care whether I lived or died. Well, the gals, one pleasant day in the fall, took me in their arms, and carried me down stairs, and put me in a little baby wagon, and drew me ’bout twenty rods and back, and then took me up stairs agin’, oh! how tired I was, and they did that every day, till I got so I could walk about, and I shall always remember it in ’em, tu.
“Well, in ’bout two months arter this, I got so I could work a leetle, and one day Doctor Walker comes in with his bill of seventy odd dollars; and master says he, ‘I wish the dam nigger had died, and then I shouldn’t had this money to pay.’ Master payed him off arter some jawing; but oh! how savage master was to me arter this![[6]]
[6]. One would think that so long a time for reflection, would have softened the poor tyrant’s heart—but it is no easy matter to eradicate the tyranny which is fostered in the bosom of the possessor of irresponsible power.
“Well, next Sunday a Methodist preacher comes along, and was agoin’ to preach at Ingen Fields. And so he and his wife come down to dine with us, and we cooked a leg of mutton we had on hand, for dinner, and got it on the table, and all sets down, and master begins to cut it, and come tu, ’twas distressedly tain’ted round the bone, and smelled bad.