There was a dispute among the “chivalry” whether I should be stripped of the only remaining article of dress, my pantaloons, before being “fitted to a new suit.” The consideration that there might be ladies among the distant spectators finally operated in my favor. A brush, similar to that used in whitewashing, was now thrust into the bituminous liquid; and an illustration of one of “our institutions, sir,” was entered upon with enthusiasm. Lovell was the chief operator. The brush was first thrust into my face till eyelids, eyebrows, and hair were glued by the nauseous adhesion. Then it was vigorously applied to the bleeding seams on my back, and the intolerable anguish almost made me faint. My entire person at length being thickly smeared, the bag of feathers was lifted over me by two men and its contents poured out over the tarred surface. I will not pain you, my friends, by suggesting to your imagination all that there is of horrible, agonizing, and disgusting in this operation, which men, converted into fiends by the hardening influences of slavery, have inflicted on so many hundreds of imprudent or suspected persons from the Northern States. I see in it all now, so far as I was concerned, a Providential martyrdom to awake me to a sense of what slavery does for the education of white men. O, ye palliators of the “institution”!—Northern men with Southern principles,—ministers of religion who search the Scriptures to find excuses for the Devil’s own work,—and ye who think that any system under which money is made must be right, and of God’s appointment,—who hate any agitation which is likely to diminish the dividends from your cotton-mills or the snug profits from your Southern trade,—come and learn what it is to be tarred and feathered for profaning, by thought or act, or by suspected thought or act, that holy of holies called slavery! After the feathers had been applied, a wag among my tormentors fixed to my neck and arms pieces of an old sheet stretched on whalebone to imitate a pair of wings. This spectacle afforded to the spectators the climax of their exhilaration and delight. I was then led by a rope to the river’s side and put on an old rickety raft where I had to use constant vigilance to keep the loose planks from disparting. Two men in a boat towed me out into the middle of the stream, and then, amid mock cheers, I was left to drift down with the current or drown, just as the chances might hold in regard to my strength.