Letters of Lydia Maria Child, with a biographical introduction by John G. Whittier and an appendix by Wendell Phillips.

LETTERS. 131
beyold the facts." To a lady who observed that the
timle had not yet com:-e for agitating the subject, she
answered: "6 I apprehend if thou werlt a slave, toiling in the fields of Carolina, thou wouldst think the
time had2fully conie."
Mr. Thome of Kentucky, in the course of his eloquent lectures on tlhis subject, said': " I breathed my
first breath in an atmosphere of slavery. But though
I aml heir to a slave inheritance, I atlm bold to denounce. the whole system as an outrege, a complication of crimles, and wrongs, and cruelties, that nmake
angels weep."
lMr. Allen of Alabama, in a discussion with the
students at Lane Selminary, in 1834, told of a slave
who was tied up and beaten all day, with a paddle
full of holes. "'At night, his flesh was literally
pounded to a jelly. The punishment was itnflicted
within hearing of the academy and the public green.
But no one took any notice of it. No one thought
any wrong was done. At our house, it is so common
to hear screams from a; neighboring plantation that
we think nothing of it. Lest any one should think
tlla;t the slaves are generally well treated, and that
the cases I mentioned are exceptions, let me be distinctly understood tlhat cruelty is the rule, and kindness is the exception."
In the samie discussion, a student from Virginia,
after relating cases of great cruelty, said: "Such
things are common all over Virginia; at least, so far
as I am acquainted. But the planters generally avoid
punishing their slaves before strangers."
}Miss Mattie Griffith of Kentucky, whose entire
property consisted in slaves, emancipated them all.
The noble-hearted girl wrote to me: "I shall go