the horrid deed was kept a secret in the
family, and it was reported that she died of sickness. This wretch at
the same time was a member of a Presbyterian church. Towards her
slaves she was certainly the most cruel wretch of any woman with whom
I was ever acquainted--yet she was nothing more than a slaveholder.
She would deplore slavery as much as I did, and often told me she was
much of an abolitionist as I was. She was constant in the declaration
that her kind treatment to her slaves was proverbial. Thought I, then
the Lord have mercy on the rest. She has often told me of the cruel
treatment of the slaves on a plantation adjoining her father's in the
low country of South Carolina. She says she has often seen them driven
to the necessity of eating frogs and lizards to sustain life. As to
the mode of living generally, my information is rather limited, being
with few exceptions confined to the different families where I have
boarded. My stopping places at the south have mostly been in cities.
In them the slaves are better fed and clothed than on plantations. The
house servants are fed on what the families leave. But they are kept
short, and I think are oftener whipped for stealing something to eat
than any other crime. On plantations their food is principally
hommony, as the southerners call it. It is simply cracked corn boiled.
This probably constitutes seven-eights of their living. The
house-servants in cities are generally decently clothed, and some
favorite ones are richly dressed, but those on the plantations,
especially in their dress, if it can be called dress, exhibit the most
haggard and squalid appearance. I have frequently seen those of both
sexes more than two-thirds naked. I have seen from forty to sixty,
male and female, at work in a field, many of both sexes with their
bodies entirely naked--who did not exhibit signs of shame more than
cattle. As I did not go among them much on the plantations, I have
had but few opportunities for examining the backs of slaves--but have
frequently passed where they were at work, and been occasionally
present with them, and in almost every case there were marks of
violence on some parts of them--every age, sex and condition being
liable to the whip. A son of the gentleman with whom I boarded, a
young man about twenty-one years of age, had a plantation and eight or
ten slaves. He used to boast almost every night of whipping some of
them. One day he related to me a case of w