American Slavery As It Is:

Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses

Theodore Dwight Weld, 1803-1895

A Full Chronicle of the Guilt of America - First-hand accounts of slavery and its horrors.

'The Ultimate Book on Slavery in America'

OUTLINING THE BRUTALITY OF SLAVERY IN THE U.S.

The Spartans boasted of their kindness to their slaves, while they whipped them to death by thousands at the altars of their gods. The Romans lauded their own mild treatment of their bondmen, while they branded their names on their flesh with hot irons, and when old, threw them into their fish ponds, or like Cato "the Just," starved them to death. It is the boast of the Turks that they treat their slaves as though they were their children, yet their common name for them is "dogs," and for the merest trifles, their feet are bastinadoed to a jelly, or their heads clipped off with the scimetar. The Portuguese pride themselves on their gentle bearing toward their slaves, yet the streets of Rio Janeiro are filled with naked men and women yoked in pairs to carts and wagons, and whipped by drivers like beasts of burden.

Slaveholders, the world over, have sung the praises of their tender mercies towards their slaves. Even the wretches that plied the African slave trade, tried to rebut Clarkson's proofs of their cruelties, setting forth the accommodations of the "middle passage," and their kind attentions to the comfort of those whom they had stolen from their homes, and kept stowed away under hatches, during a voyage of four thousand miles. So, according to the testimony of the autocrat of the Russias, he exercises great clemency towards the Poles, though he exiles them by thousands to the snows of Siberia, and tramples them down by millions, at home.

A runaway was seized and put in Newbern jail. His wrists were tied together and drawn over his knees. A stick was then passed over his arms and under his knees, and he secured in this manner, his trowsers were then stripped down, and he turned over on his side, and severely beaten with the paddle, then turned over and severely beaten on the other side, and then turned back again, and tortured by another bruising and beating. He was afterwards kept in the stocks a week, and whipped every morning.

A planter offered a white man twenty dollars for every one of his female slaves, whom he would get in the family way. This offer was no doubt made for the purpose of improving the stock, on the same principle that farmers endeavour to improve their cattle by crossing the breed.'

Sample Subjects Covered in this Publication;

• Women at child-birth and slave breeding
• Slaves at labor
• Herding of slaves and cruelties to slaves
• Paddle-torturing and Branding with hot iron
• Iron collars, yokes, clogs, and bells
• Head of runaway slave on a pole
• Cruelty to Women slaves
• Suffering from hunger
• Slaves are wretchedly sheltered and lodged
• Treatment of the sick
• Woman with a child chained to her neck
• Medical attendance upon slaves
• Mistresses flog their slaves
• Comfort of slaves disregarded
• Horrors of slavery indescribable
• Slave driving, Droves of slaves 'human cattle
• Slave markets and slave sales
• Slaves roasted and flogged
• Man-stealing encouraged by law
• Female slave whipped to death, and delivered a dead infant
• Hunting of runaways slaves
• Separation of lovers, parents, and children
• Old man flogged after praying for his tyrant
• Slave-huts not as comfortable as pig-sties
• Suffering drives the slaves to despair and suicide
• Whips as common as the plough
• Slaves lacerated, without clothing, and without food
• Treatment of slaves as brutes

etc