and when a physician saw her, he said she was dying of a disease brought on by over fatigue; her mother was permitted to visit her, but ere she reached her, the damps of death stood upon her brow, and she had only the sad consolation of looking on the death-struck form and convulsive agonies of her child.
A beloved friend in South Carolina, the wife of a slaveholder, with whom I often mingled my tears, when helpless and hopeless we deplored together the horrors of slavery, related to me some years since the following circumstance.
On the plantation adjoining her husband's, there was a slave of pre-eminent piety. His master was not a professor of religion, but the superior excellence of this disciple of Christ was not unmarked by him, and I believe he was so sensible of the good influence of his piety that he did not deprive him of the few religious privileges within his reach. A planter was one day dining with the owner of this slave, and in the course of conversation observed, that all profession of religion among slaves was mere hypocrisy. The other asserted a contrary opinion, adding, I have a slave who I believe would rather die than deny his Saviour. This was ridiculed, and the master urged to prove the assertion. He accordingly sent for this man of God, and peremptorily ordered him to deny his belief in the Lord Jesus Christ. The slave pleaded to be excused, constantly affirming that he would rather die than deny the Redeemer, whose blood was shed for him. His master, after vainly trying to induce obedience by threats, had him terribly whipped. The fortitude of the sufferer was not to be shaken; he nobly rejected the offer of exemption from further chastisement at the expense of destroying his soul, and this blessed martyr died in consequence of this severe infliction. Oh, how bright a gem will this victim of irresponsible power be, in that crown which sparkles on the Redeemer's brow; and that many such will cluster there, I have not the shadow of a doubt.
SARAH M. GRIMKÉ.
Fort Lee, Bergen County,
New Jersey, 3rd Month, 26th, 1830.
Testimony of Rev. John Graham
of Townsend, Mass., who resided in S. Carolina, from 1831, to the latter part of 1833. Mr. Graham graduated at Amherst College in 1829, spent some time at the Theological Seminary, in New Haven, Ct., and went to South Carolina, for his health in 1830. He resided principally on the island of St. Helena, S. C., and most of the time in the family of James Tripp, Esq., a wealthy slave holding planter. During his residence at St. Helena, he was engaged as an instructer, and was most of the time the stated preacher on the island. Mr. G. was extensively known in Massachusetts; and his fellow students and instructers, at Amherst College, and at Yale Theological Seminary, can bear testimony to his integrity and moral worth. The following are extracts of letters, which he wrote while in South Carolina, to an intimate friend in Concord, Massachusetts, who has kindly furnished them for publication.
EXTRACTS.
Springfield, St. Helena Isl., S. C., Oct. 22, 1832.
"Last night, about one o'clock, I was awakened by the report of a musket. I was out of bed almost instantly. On opening my window, I found the report proceeded from my host's chamber. He had let off his pistol, which he usually keeps by him night and day, at a slave, who had come into the yard, and as it appears, had been with one of his house servants. He did not hit him. The ball, taken from a pine tree the next morning, I will show you, should I be spared by Providence ever to return to you. The house servant was called to the master's chamber, where he received 75 lashes, very severe too; and I could not only hear every lash, but each groan which succeeded very distinctly as I lay in my bed. What was then done with the servant I know not. Nothing was said of this to me in the morning and I presume it will ever be kept from me with care, if I may judge of kindred acts. I shall make no comment."
In the same letter, Mr. Graham says:--
"You ask me of my hostess"--then after giving an idea of her character says: "To day, she has I verily believe laid, in a very severe manner too, more than 300 stripes, upon the house servants," (17 in number.)
Darlington, Court House. S. C. March, 28th, 1838.
"I walked up to the Court House to day, where I heard one of the most interesting cases I ever heard. I say interesting, on account of its novelty to me, though it had no novelty for the people, as such cases are of frequent occurrence. The case was this: To know whether two ladies, present in court, were white or black. The ladies were dressed well, seemed modest, and were retiring and neat in their look, having blue eyes, black hair, and appeared to understand much of the etiquette of southern behaviour.
"A man, more avaricious than humane, as is the case with most of the rich planters, laid a remote claim to those two modest, unassuming, innocent and free young ladies as his property, with the design of putting them into the field, and thus increasing his STOCK! As well as the people of Concord are known to be of a peaceful disposition, and for their love of good order, I verily believe if a similar trial should be brought forward there and conducted as this was, the good people would drive the lawyers out of the house. Such would be their indignation at their language, and at the mean under-handed manner of trying to ruin those young ladies, as to their standing in society in this district, if they could not succeed in dooming them for life to the degraded condition of slavery, and all its intolerable cruelties. Oh slavery! if statues of marble could curse you, they would speak. If bricks could speak, they would all surely thunder out their anathemas against you, accursed thing! How many white sons and daughters, have bled and groaned under the lash in this sultry climate." &c.
Under date of March, 1832, Mr. G. writes, "I have been doing what I hope never to be called to do again, and what I fear I have badly done, though performed to the best of my ability, namely, sewing up a very bad wound made by a wild hog. The slave was hunting wild hogs, when one, being closely pursued, turned upon his pursuer, who turning to run, was caught by the animal, thrown down, and badly wounded in the thigh. The wound is about five inches long and very deep. It was made by the tusk of the animal. The slaves brought him to one of the huts on Mr. Tripp's plantation and made every exertion to stop the blood by filling the wound with ashes, (their remedy for stopping blood) but finding this to fail they came to me (there being no other white person on the plantation, as it is now holidays) to know if I could stop the blood. I went and found that the poor creature must bleed to death unless it could be stopped soon. I called for a needle and succeeded in sewing it up as well as I could, and in stopping the blood. In a short time his master, who had been sent for came; and oh, you would have shuddered if you had heard the awful oaths that fell from his lips, threatening in the same breath "to pay him for that!" I left him as soon as decency would permit, with his hearty thanks that I had saved him $500! Oh, may heaven protect the poor, suffering, fainting slave, and show his master his wan ton cruelty--oh slavery! slavery!"
Under date of July, 1832, Mr. G. writes, "I wish you could have been at the breakfast table with me this morning to have seen and heard what I saw and heard, not that I wish your ear and heart and soul pained as mine is, 'with every day's' observation 'of wrong and outrage' with which this place is filled, but that you might have auricular and ocular evidence of the cruelty of slavery, of cruelties that mortal language can never describe--that you might see the tender mercies of a hardened slaveholder, one who bears the name of being one of the mildest and most merciful masters of which this island can boast. Oh, my friend, another is screaming under the lash, in the shed-room, but for what I know not. The scene this morning was truly distressing to me. It was this:--After the blessing was asked at the breakfast table, one of the servants, a woman grown, in giving one of the children some molasses, happened to pour out a little
