constant action upon them of the
strongest dissuasives from such acts that can operate on human nature.

Advertisements similar to the preceding may at any time be gathered by
scores from the daily and weekly newspapers of the slave states.
Before presenting the reader with further testimony in proof of the
proposition at the head of this part of our subject, we remark, that
some of the tortures enumerated under this and the preceding heads,
are not in all cases inflicted by slaveholders as _punishments_, but
sometimes merely as preventives of escape, for the greater security of
their 'property'. Iron collars, chains, &c. are put upon slaves when
they are driven or transported from one part of the country to
another, in order to keep them from running away. Similar measures are
often resorted to upon plantations. When the master or owner suspects
a slave of plotting an escape, an iron collar with long 'horns,' or a
bar of iron, or a ball and chain, are often fastened upon him, for the
double purpose of retarding his flight, should he attempt it, and of
serving as an easy means of detection.

Another inhuman method of _marking_ slaves, so that they may be easily
described and detected when they escape, is called _cropping_. In the
preceding advertisements, the reader will perceive a number of cases,
in which the runaway is described as '_cropt_,' or a '_notch cut_ in
the ear, or a part or the whole of the ear _cut off_,' &c.

Two years and a half since, the writer of this saw a letter, then just
received by Mr. Lewis Tappan, of New York, containing a negro's ear
cut off close to the head. The writer of the letter, who signed
himself Thomas Oglethorpe, Montgomery, Alabama, sent it to Mr. Tappan
as 'a specimen of a negro's ears,' and desired him to add it to his
'collection.'

Another method of _marking_ slaves, is by drawing out or breaking off
one or two _front teeth_--commonly the upper ones, as the mark would
in that case be the more obvious. An instance of this kind the reader
will recall in the testimony of Sarah M. Grimke, page 30, and of which
she had _personal_ knowledge; being well acquainted both with the
inhuman master, (a distinguished citizen of South Carolina,) by whose
order the brutal deed was done, and with the poor young girl whose
mouth was thus barbarously mutilated, to furnish a convenient mark by
which to describe her in case of her elopement, as she had frequently
run away.

The case stated b