ferry without a pass. By these regulations, and the great numbers of patrols, escape is made next to impossible.

Formerly slaves were allowed to have religious meetings of their own; but after the insurrection which I spoke of before, they were forbidden to meet even for worship. Often they are flogged if they are found singing or praying at home. They may go to the places of worship used by the whites; but they like their own meetings better. My wife's brother Isaac was a colored preacher. A number of slaves went privately into a wood to hold meetings; when they were found out, they were flogged, and each was forced to tell who else was there. Three were shot, two of whom were killed and the other was badly wounded. For preaching to them, Isaac was flogged, and his back pickled; when it was nearly well, he was flogged and pickled again, and so on for some months; then his back was suffered to get well, and he was sold. A little while before this, his wife was sold away with an infant at her breast; and out of six children, four had been sold away by one at a time. On the way with his buyers he dropped down dead; his heart was broken.

Having thus narrated what has happened to myself, my relatives and near friends, I will add a few matters about slaves and colored people in general.

Slaves are under fear in every word they speak. If, in their master's kitchen, they let slip an expression of discontent, or a wish for freedom, it is often reported to the master or mistress by the children of the family who may be playing about: severe flogging is often the consequence.

I have already said that it is forbidden by law to teach colored persons to read or write. A few well-disposed white young persons, of the families to which the slaves belonged, have ventured to teach them, but they dare not let it be known they have done so.

The proprietors get new land cleared in this way. They first 'dead' a piece of ground in the woods adjoining the plantation: by 'deading' is meant killing the trees, by cutting a nick all round each, quite through the bark. Out of this ground each colored person has a piece as large as he can tend after his other work is done; the women have pieces in like manner. The slave works at night, cutting down the timber and clearing the ground; after it is cleared, he has it for his own use for two or three years, as may be agreed on. As these new clearings lie between the woods and the old cultivated land, the squirrels and raccoons first come at the crops on them, and thus those on the planter's land are saved from much waste. When the negro has had the land for the specified time, and it has become fit for the plough, the master takes it, and he is removed to another new piece. It is no uncommon thing for the land to be taken from him before the time is out, if it has sooner become fit for the plough. When the crop is gathered, the master comes to see how much there is of it; he then gives the negro an order to sell that quantity; without that order, no storekeeper dare buy it. The slave lays out the money in something tidy to go to meeting in, and something to take to his wife.

The evidence of a black man, or of ever so many black men, stands for nothing against that of one white; in consequence of it the free negroes are liable to great cruelties. They have had their dwellings entered, their bedding and furniture destroyed, and themselves, their wives and children, beaten; some have even been taken, with their wives, into the woods, and tied up, flogged, and left there. There is nothing which a white man may not do against a black one, if he only takes care that no other white man can give evidence against him.

A law has lately been passed in New Orleans prohibiting any free colored person from going there.

The coasting packets of the ports on the Atlantic commonly have colored cooks. When a vessel goes from New York or Boston to a port in the slaveholding states, the black cook is usually put in jail till the vessel sails again.

No colored person can travel without a pass. If he cannot show it, he may be flogged by any body; in such a case he often is seized and flogged by the patrols. All through the slave states there are patrols; they are so numerous that they cannot be easily escaped.

The only time when a man can visit his wife, when they are on different estates, is Saturday evening and Sunday. If they be very near to each other, he may sometimes see her on Wednesday evening. He must always return to his work by sunrise; if he fail to do so, he is flogged. When he has got together all the little things he can for his wife and children, and has walked many miles to see them, he may find that they have all been sold away, some in one direction, and some in another. He gives up all hope of seeing them again, but he dare not utter a word of complaint.

It often happens that, when a slave wishes to visit his wife on another plantation, his own master is busy or from home, and therefore he cannot get a pass. He ventures without it. If there be any little spite against his wife or himself, he may be asked for it when he arrives, and, not having it, he may be beaten with thirty-nine stripes, and sent away. On his return, he may be seized by the patrol, and flogged again for the same reason; and he will not wonder if he is again seized and beaten for the third time.

If a negro has given offence to the patrol, even by so innocent a matter as dressing tidily to go to a place of worship, he will be seized by one of them, and another will tear up his pass; while one is flogging him, the others will look another way; so when he or his master makes complaint of his having been beaten without cause, and he points out the person who did it, the others will swear they saw no one beat him. His oath, being that of a black man, would stand for nothing; but he may not even be sworn; and, in such a case, his tormentors are safe, for they were the only whites present.

In all the slave states there are men who make a trade of whipping negroes; they ride about inquiring for jobs of persons who keep no overseer; if there is a negro to be whipped, whether man or woman, this man is employed when he calls, and does it immediately; his fee is half a dollar. Widows and other females, having negroes, get them whipped in this way. Many mistresses will insist on the slave who has been flogged begging pardon for her fault on her knees, and thanking her for the correction.

A white man, who lived near me in Camden county, Thomas Evidge, followed this business. He was also sworn whipper at the court house. A law was passed that any white man detected in stealing should be whipped. Mr. Dozier frequently missed hogs, and flogged many of his negroes on suspicion of stealing them; when he could not, in his suspicions, fix on any one in particular, he flogged them all round, saying that he was sure of having punished the right one. Being one day shooting in his woods, he heard the report of another gun, and shortly after met David Evidge, the nephew of the whipper, with one of his hogs on his back, which had just been shot. David was sent to prison, convicted of the theft, and sentenced to be flogged. His uncle, who vapored about greatly in flogging slaves, and taunted them with unfeeling speeches while he did it, could not bear the thought of flogging his nephew, and hired a man to do it. The person pitched on chanced to be a sailor; he laid it well on the thief; pleased enough were the colored people to see a white back for the first time subjected to the lash.

Another man of the same business, George Wilkins, did no greater credit to the trade. Mr. Carnie, on Western Branch, Virginia, often missed corn from his barn. Wilkins, the whipper, was very