Page:The Barbarism of Slavery.djvu/54

 New-York, peddling garden-seeds, was forcibly expelled from the State. In Georgia, a merchant's clerk, Irishman by birth, who simply asked the settlement of a just debt, was cast into prison, robbed of his pocket-book, containing nearly one hundred dollars, and barely escaped with his life. In South-Carolina, a stone-cutter, Irishman by birth, was stripped naked, and then, amidst cries of “ Brand him!" “Burn-him!" “Spike him to death!" scourged so that blood came at every stroke, while tar was poured upon his lacerated flesh. These atrocities, calculated, according to the words of a poet of subtle beauty, to “make a holiday in hell," were all ordained, by Vigilance Committees, or by that busiest magistrate, Judge Lynch, inspired by the demon of Slavery.

 He let them loose, and cried, Halloo! How shall we yield him honor due?"

In perfect shamelessness, and as if to blazon this fiendish spirit, we have had, this winter, in a leading newspaper of Virginia, an article, proposing to give twenty-five dollars each for the heads of citizens, mostly members of Congress, known to be against Slavery, and $50,000 for the head of William H. Seward. And in still another paper of Virginia, we find a proposition to raise $10,000 to be given for the kidnapping and delivery of a venerable citizen, Joshua R. Giddings, at Richmond, “or $5000 for the production of his head." These are fresh instances, but they are not alone. At a meeting of Slave-masters in Georgia, in 1835, the Governor was recommended to issue a proclamation, offering $5000 as a reward for the apprehension of either of ten persons named in the resolution, citizens of New-York and Massachusetts, and one a subject of Great Britain — not one of whom it was pretended had ever set foot on the soil of Georgia. The Milledgeville Federal Union, a newspaper of Georgia, in 1836, contained an offer of $10,000 for kidnapping a clergyman residing in the city of New-York. A Committee of Vigilance of Louisiana, in 1835, offered, in the Louisiana Journal, $50,000 to any person who would deliver into their hands Arthur Tappan, a merchant of New-York; and during the same year a public meeting in Alabama, with a person entitled “Honorable" in the chair, offered a similar reward of $50,000 for the apprehension of the same Arthur Tappan, and