his human stock, both
Edward Covey and his wife, Susan, were ecstatic with joy. No one dreamed
of reproaching the woman, or of finding fault with the hired man--Bill
Smith--the father of the children, for Mr. Covey himself had locked the
two up together every night, thus inviting the result.

But I will pursue this revolting subject no further. No better
illustration of the unchaste and demoralizing character of slavery can
be found, than is furnished in the fact that this professedly Christian
slaveholder, amidst all his prayers and hymns, was shamelessly and
boastfully encouraging, and actually compelling, in his own house,
undisguised and unmitigated fornication, as a means of increasing his
human stock. I may remark here, that, while this fact will be read with
disgust and shame at the north, it will be _laughed at_, as smart and
praiseworthy in Mr. Covey, at the south; for a man is no more condemned
there for buying a woman and devoting her to this life of dishonor,{170}
than for buying a cow, and raising stock from her. The same rules
are observed, with a view to increasing the number and quality of the
former, as of the latter.

I will here reproduce what I said of my own experience in this wretched
place, more than ten years ago:

If at any one time of my life, more than another, I was made to drink
the bitterest dregs of slavery, that time was during the first six
months of my stay with Mr. Covey. We were worked all weathers. It was
never too hot or too cold; it could never rain, blow, snow, or hail too
hard for us to work in the field. Work, work, work, was scarcely more
the order of the day than the night. The longest days were too short
for him, and the shortest nights were too long for him. I was somewhat
unmanageable when I first went there; but a few months of his discipline
tamed me. Mr. Covey succeeded in breaking me. I was broken in body, soul
and spirit. My natural elasticity was crushed; my intellect languished;
the disposition to read departed; the cheerful spark that lingered about
my eye died; the dark night of slavery closed in upon me; and behold a
man transformed into a brute!

Sunday was my only leisure time. I spent this in a sort of beast-like
stupor, between sleep and wake, under some large tree. At times, I
would rise up, a flash of energetic freedom would dart through my soul,
accompanied with a faint beam of hope, flickered for a moment, and then
vanished. I sank down again, mourn