If kindness were the rule, we should not see advertisements filling the columns of almost every southern newspaper, offering large rewards for fugitive slaves, and describing them as being branded with irons, loaded with chains, and scarred by the whip.

One of the most telling testimonies against the pretended kindness of slaveholders, is the fact that uncounted numbers of fugitives are now inhabiting the Dismal Swamp, preferring{344} the untamed wilderness to their cultivated homes--choosing rather to encounter hunger and thirst, and to roam with the wild beasts of the forest, running the hazard of being hunted and shot down, than to submit to the authority of _kind_ masters.
I tell you, my friends, humanity is never driven to such an unnatural course of life, without great wrong.

The slave finds more of the milk of human kindness in the bosom of the savage Indian, than in the heart of his _Christian_ master.

He leaves the man of the _bible_, and takes refuge with the man of the _tomahawk_.

He rushes from the praying slaveholder into the paws of the bear.