Treatment of Slaves: Punishment

                 According to abolitionist Theodore Dwight Weld, the following testimony came from Reverend Henry T. Hopkins, a minister at the Primitive Methodist Church in New York City. From 1821 to 1826, Hopkins had lived in Portsmouth, Virginia, a small city just east of Southampton County.

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                 An old colored man, the slave of Mr. Emerson, of Portsmouth, Virginia, being under deep conviction for sin, went into the back part of his master's garden to pour out his soul in prayer to God. For this offence he was whipped thirty-nine lashes.

From Theodore Dwight Weld, American Slavery As It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses (New York: American Antislavery Society, 1839), 88.