and sick, scantily
clothe, badly lodge, and half shelter their slaves; that _they_ do not
barbarously flog, load with irons, imprison in the stocks, brand and
maim them; hunt them when runaway with dogs and guns, and sunder by
force and forever the nearest kindred--is shown, by almost every page
of this work, to be an assumption, not only utterly groundless, but
directly opposed to masses of irrefragable evidence. If the reader
will be at the pains to review the testimony recorded on the foregoing
pages he will find that a very large proportion of the atrocities
detailed were committed, not by the most ignorant and lowest classes
of society, but by persons 'of property and standing,' by masters and
mistresses belonging to the 'upper classes,' by persons in the learned
professions, by civil, judicial, and military officers, by the
_literati_, by the fashionable elite and persons of more than ordinary
'respectability' and external morality--large numbers of whom are
professors of religion.

It will be recollected that the testimony of Sarah M. Grimke, and
Angelina G. Weld, was confined exclusively to the details of slavery
as exhibited in the _highest classes of society_, mainly in
Charleston, S.C. See their testimony pp. 22-24 and 52-57. The former
has furnished us with the following testimony in addition to that
already given.

"Nathaniel Heyward of Combahee, S.C., one of the wealthiest planters
in the state, stated, in conversation with some other planters who
were complaining of the idle and lazy habits of their slaves, and the
difficulty of ascertaining whether their sickness was real or
pretended, and the loss they suffered from their frequent absence on
this account from their work, said, 'I never lose a day's work: it is
an _established_ rule on my plantations that the tasks of all the sick
negroes _shall be done by those who are well in addition to their
own_. By this means a vigilant supervision is kept up by the slaves
over each other, and they take care that nothing but real sickness
keeps any one out of the field.' I spent several winters in the
neighborhood of Nathaniel Heyward's plantations, and well remember his
character as a severe task master. _I was present when the above
statement was made_."

The cool barbarity of such a regulation is hardly surpassed by the
worst edicts of the Roman Caligula--especially when we consider that
the plantations of this man were in the neighborhood of the Combahee
r