I was on this farm about six years, five of which I was employed as house servant; and it is probable that I should have remained in the house, had I not refused to give him some information respecting a pig, which two of the men had stolen. This disobedience caused me much suffering. In the first place, I was severely whipped with a cowskin, the scars of which punishment I have to this day, and then I was sent to the field to work,—the place I dreaded mostly. From morning till night could the whip be heard, accompanied with the cries and groans of the sufferers, whilst I was employed at the house. I was not under the direction of the cruel overseer, and consequently escaped his cruelty. A day seldom passed without witnessing several hundred lashes inflicted upon the slaves; each individual having a stated number of pounds of cotton to pick, the deficit of which was made up by as many lashes being applied to the poor slave's back as he was so unlucky as to fall short in the number of pounds of cotton which he was to have picked. As I had not been accustomed to field-work, I found it impossible to keep up with the others. The overseer, seeing this, came up to me and asked me if I knew where I was; I said, I did; he then replied, that I had been at the house so long that I had got the devil in me; and if I did not keep my row up with the rest, he would give me a hundred lashes, and that d——d quick. To this I did not reply, but toiled on to the best of my knowledge, hoping to escape punishment; but all in vain; frequently was I whipped without any just cause. I do now think that he made me his particular victim on account of my having been out of his power so long a time. I am incapable of describing the great difference between house and field labor. I have, since my settling in the North, heard many persons, in speaking of slavery as they have seen it in cities, towns, &c., where it exists in its mildest form, apologizing for it, holding it forth to the world as a great benefit to the black man. They say the slaves are nicely fed, clothed, and taken care of in a very comfortable manner. But, step back in the interior of slave States, on the plantations, where you see one hundred slaves in charge of a drunken overseer, thinly clad, and scantily fed; driven forth to labor from daylight till dark; where a slave for the most trivial offence may be whipped to death, for in case of death arising from whipping the overseer is indifferent,—he knows the master cannot use the word of his slave against him,—he will not acknowledge it himself. Thus there is nothing to restrain him from using the most unnatural and inhuman cruelty to the poor slaves.