The American Slave Code in Theory and Practice Its Distinctive Features Shown by Its Statutes, Judicial Decisions, and Illustrative Facts

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1853 edition. Excerpt: ...most respectable Southern journals, with the names of the advertisers, many of them prominent citizens, and sometimes respectable ladies! One case, on page 15 of Mr. Weld's book, is doubtless a specimen of tens, if not hundreds of thousands; assuredly it does not come under the condemnation of being "unusual." The "owner" of a female slave, who was a Methodist, proposed a criminal intercourse with her: she refused. He sent her to the "overseer" to be flogged. Again he made advances--again she refused, and again she was flogged! Afterwards she yielded to his adulterous wishes! And now, the attentive reader of the preceding pages will have learned that all this was strictly within the protection of the law! Its limitations this monster had not overstepped. At least, there is no adequate law for his punishment--nay, so far as appears, there have been no legislative attempts or even pretensions to provide protection against such outrages! But details of this kind, on this subject, are always set down as exceptions. We turn, then, again to a specimen of general testimonies. Rev. GEORGE WHITEFIELD, in his letter to the slaveholders of Maryland, Virginia, the two Carolinas and Georgia, after admitting "particular exceptions," charges them, in general, with treating their slaves-" worse than if they were brutes." He adds, "The BLOOD of them, SPILT for these many years in your respective provinces, will ascend up to heaven against you." WILLIAM PINCKNEY, of Maryland, (1789,) calls Maryland "the. foster-mother of petty despots, the patron of wanwn oppression! " Dr. JONATHAN EDWARDS, of Connecticut, (1791,) says, "The smack of the whip is all day long in...