e had to lie down
on the floor in this filth. Our food was very scanty, and of the most
inferior quality. No gentleman's dog would eat what we were compelled
to eat or starve.

I had not been in this prison many days before Madison Garrison, the
soul driver, bought me and my family to sell again in the New Orleans
slave market. He was buying up slaves to take to New Orleans. So he
took me and my little family to the work-house, to be kept under lock
and key at work until he had bought up as many as he wished to take
off to the South.

The work-house of Louisville was a very large brick building, built on
the plan of a jail or State's prison, with many apartments to it,
divided off into cells wherein prisoners were locked up after night.
The upper apartments were occupied by females, principally. This
prison was enclosed by a high stone wall, upon which stood watchmen
with loaded guns to guard the prisoners from breaking out, and on
either side there were large iron gates.

When Garrison conducted me with my family to the prison in which we
were to be confined until he was ready to take us to New Orleans, I
was shocked at the horrid sight of the prisoners on entering the yard.
When the large iron gate or door was thrown open to receive us, it was
astonishing to see so many whites as well as colored men loaded down
with irons, at hard labor, under the supervision of overseers.

Some were sawing stone, some cutting stone, and others breaking stone.
The first impression which was made on my mind when I entered this
place of punishment, made me think of hell, with all its terrors of
torment; such as "weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth," which was
then the idea that I had of the infernal regions from oral
instruction. And I doubt whether there can be a better picture of it
drawn, than may be sketched from an American slave prison.

In this prison almost every prisoner had a heavy log chain riveted
about his leg. It would indeed be astonishing to a Christian man to
stand in that prison one half hour and hear and see the contaminating
influences of Southern slavery on the body and mind of man--you may
there find almost every variety of character to look on. Some singing,
some crying, some praying, and others swearing. The people of color
who were in there were slaves, there without crime, but for safe
keeping, while the whites were some of the most abandoned characters
living. The keeper took me up to the anvil block