"douglass" - читать интересную книгу автора (Douglass Frederick)

of a thing, than to give him a severe flagellation,
or to deprive him of necessary food and clothing!
As if whips, chains, thumb-screws, paddles, blood-
hounds, overseers, drivers, patrols, were not all in-
dispensable to keep the slaves down, and to give
protection to their ruthless oppressors! As if, when
the marriage institution is abolished, concubinage,
adultery, and incest, must not necessarily abound;
when all the rights of humanity are annihilated, any
barrier remains to protect the victim from the fury
of the spoiler; when absolute power is assumed over
life and liberty, it will not be wielded with destruc-
tive sway! Skeptics of this character abound in so-
ciety. In some few instances, their incredulity arises
from a want of reflection; but, generally, it indicates
a hatred of the light, a desire to shield slavery from
the assaults of its foes, a contempt of the colored
race, whether bond or free. Such will try to discredit
the shocking tales of slaveholding cruelty which are
recorded in this truthful Narrative; but they will
labor in vain. Mr. DOUGLASS has frankly disclosed
the place of his birth, the names of those who
claimed ownership in his body and soul, and the
names also of those who committed the crimes which
he has alleged against them. His statements, there-
fore, may easily be disproved, if they are untrue.

In the course of his Narrative, he relates two in-
stances of murderous cruelty,--in one of which a
planter deliberately shot a slave belonging to a neigh-
boring plantation, who had unintentionally gotten
within his lordly domain in quest of fish; and in the
other, an overseer blew out the brains of a slave who
had fled to a stream of water to escape a bloody
scourging. Mr. DOUGLASS states that in neither of
these instances was any thing done by way of legal
arrest or judicial investigation. The Baltimore Amer-
ican, of March 17, 1845, relates a similar case of
atrocity, perpetrated with similar impunity--as fol-
lows:--"~Shooting a slave.~--We learn, upon the au-
thority of a letter from Charles county, Maryland,
received by a gentleman of this city, that a young
man, named Matthews, a nephew of General Mat-
thews, and whose father, it is believed, holds an of-
fice at Washington, killed one of the slaves upon his
father's farm by shooting him. The letter states that
young Matthews had been left in charge of the farm;
that he gave an order to the servant, which was dis-
obeyed, when he proceeded to the house, ~obtained
a gun, and, returning, shot the servant.~ He immedi-