New York, Aug. 17th, 1852.

Frederick Douglass: My Dear Friend: — Although unknown to you, I call you by that appellation, and so I would every individual who has done, and still continues to do so much for the milling millions who are held in the most horrible slavery, the sun ever shone on. In a worthless pro-slavery paper of this city, I read yesterday an account of the evil workings of some cotton-ocracy or slave-driver of the South, using his influence in England (at a place called Wolverhampton) to write down the [programs] now being exhibited there by Henry Bar Brown, representing it to be an exaggeration of the evil of slavery. But I was happy to find that a jury of my entire country did not think so, and awarded Brown a verdict of $600 against the [illegible]. My dear sir, I know what slavery is in all its horrors. No one better; and I can only say that no artist can exaggerate slavery either in act, word or deed; and it requires an "imprinted " language such as does not exist on our earth to pourtray the enormities and horrible violation practiced on the poor suffering black at this day. In the chivalrous State of South Carolina they use the most ingenious mode of torture to their domestics, or house servants, that the mind of man can devise. Such as cutting, making them stand on hot ashes, heating iron to a white heat, and piercing the epidermis. Perhaps you may wish to know what cutting means. It is this: Baring the body to the hips, and making the poor sufferer lay in a horizontal position, and then getting a large cat—a live cat, my dear sir, and applying him or her to the most tender parts thereby, pulling or pinching the tail violently. The cat tries to retain its hold, and buries its claws in the flesh, causing the blood to flow at every opperation. I tell you, my dear sir, over and over again, that slavery in its horrible deformity cannot be exaggerated; and if it cannot be abolished peaceably, it ought to be forcibly. It appears all arguments, all persuasions and threats are of no avail. I, for one, am willing to sacrifice the last drop of blood I have in my veins, when the time comes for our poor degraded brethren.

Yours,

Jonas Pekel.