Walking for a stroll, a day or two after, in the vicinity of the Marine-promenade, I saw a strange-looking cavalcade approaching.  Two armed overseers were escorting five negroes, recently captured, to the city gaol.  The poor creatures were so heavily shackled, that they could walk but slowly, and their brutal conductors kept urging them on, chiefly by coarse language and oaths, now and then accompanied by a severe stroke with a slave-whip carried by one of them.  The recovered fugitives looked very dejected, and were, no doubt, brooding over the consequences of their conduct.  The elder of the party, a stout fellow of about forty-five years old, of very sullen look, had a distinct brand on his forehead of the initials S.T.R.  I afterwards inquired what these brand-marks signified, supposing, naturally, that they were the initials of the name of his present or former owner.  My informant, who was a by-stander, stated that he was, no doubt, an incorrigibly bad fellow, and that the initials S.T.R. were often used in such cases.  I inquired their signification, when, to my astonishment, he replied it might be, “Stop the rascal,” and added that private signals were in constant use among the inland planters, as he called them, who, he said, suffered so much by their hands running away, that it was absolutely necessary to adopt a plan of the kind for security.  He further stated, that such incorrigibles, when caught, were never allowed to leave the plantations, so that if they ventured abroad, they carried the warrant for their immediate arrest with them.  “But,” he went on, “people are beginning to dislike such severity, and a new code of regulations, backed by the Legislature, is much talked of by the innovators, as we call them, to prevent such practices.”  I have no doubt this man owned slaves himself.

I said I thought myself that the policy of kindness would answer better than such severities, and it would be well if slave-holders generally were to try it.

“Ah, stranger,” he replied, “I see you don’t understand things here, down south.  Don’t you know that people who are over kind get imposed on?  This is specially the case with slaves; treat them well, and you’ll soon find them running off, or complaining.  The only way to manage niggers is to keep them down, then you can control them, but not else.”

It has been urged a thousand times in defence of the upholders of slavery in its various ramifications, that they are in reality, as a body, opposed to the system, and would readily conform to any change that would be sufficiently comprehensive to indemnify them from present and future loss.  From conversations heard in South Carolina, and other slave districts, I am quite satisfied that this is a misrepresentation, and that the generality of proprietors regard any change as a dangerous innovation, and that, far from reluctantly following the occupation of traders in flesh and blood, it is quite congenial to the vitiated tastes of the