Any place of pain and turmoil. Synonyms:hell, hellhole, inferno, snake pit, the pits."The inferno of the engine room" , "When you're alone Christmas is the pits"
... talented and sensitive mulattoes and quadroons who might be quite as fit for freedom as their masters. In the later period the more common resorts were to whipping, and particularly to sale. The menace of this last was shrewdly used by making a bogey man of the trader and a reputed hell on earth of any district whither he was supposed to carry his merchandise. "They are taking her to Georgia for to wear her life away" was a slave refrain welcome to the ears of masters outside that state; and the slanderous imputation gave no offence even ... — American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
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