If it be right to hold slaves at all, it is right to hold{321} them in the only way in which they can be held; and this can be done only by shutting out the light of education from their minds, and brutalizing their persons.

The whip, the chain, the gag, the thumb-screw, the blood-hound, the stocks, and all the other bloody paraphernalia of the slave system, are indispensably necessary to the relation of master and slave.

The slave must be subjected to these, or he ceases to be a slave.

Let him know that the whip is burned; that the fetters have been turned to some useful and profitable employment; that the chain is no longer for his limbs; that the blood-hound is no longer to be put upon his track; that his master's authority over him is no longer to be enforced by taking his life--and immediately he walks out from the house of bondage and asserts his freedom as a man.

The slaveholder finds it necessary to have these implements to keep the slave in bondage; finds it necessary to be able to say, "Unless you do so and so; unless you do as I bid you--I will take away your life!" Some of the most awful scenes of cruelty are constantly taking place in the middle states of the Union.