CHAPTER XVII.

FACTS ILLUSTRATING THE KIND AND DEGREE OF PROTECTION EXTENDED TO SLAVES.

The extent, the atrocity, the frequency, and the impunity of barbarous outrages upon Slaves, show that the Laws afford them little or no protection.

WE have occupied so much space with the laws on the subject of the protection of slaves, that we can spare little room for the abundant facts which correspond with and illustrate them.

In respect to the murdering of slaves by white men, with general impunity, two propositions, if sustained, will settle the question. First, the murdering of slaves by white men has all along been, and still is, notoriously frequent. Not a few of these murdered their own slaves. Second, upon the most diligent inquiry and public challenge, for fifteen or twenty years past, not one single case has yet been ascertained* in which, either during that time or pre

* We say "ascertained." We have already alluded to some few cases in Wheeler's Law of Slavery, which may have been of that character, though the result does not appear clearly, which is the more remarkable, as the compiler had called in question the state

viously, a master killing his slave, or indeed any other white man, has suffered the penalty of death for the murder of a slave. These two general facts, if they are facts, tell the whole story, so far as the protection of the lives of slaves is concerned.

At a time of much general excitement on this very question, during the period just now mentioned, (1839,) a case occurred which, it was generally supposed on all hands at the North, would prove an exception. A Court in South Carolina convicted a white man of having murdered a slave, and sentenced him to death. Governor Butler declined to comply with an application for his pardon, assigning, as a reason, that the eyes of the civilized world were upon them, and that the reputation of the State was at stake. This appeal, it was supposed, would be sufficient, but it only added fuel to the general excitement occasioned by the unusual if not unprecedented sentence of the Court. The whole State was in a ferment. The Court and the Governor were denounced. The press fulminated its anathemas; and before the day of execution arrived, the community were quieted with the announcement that the prisoner had escaped! Whether the locks were opened with keys, or the bolts broken; whether the walls were pierced or the windows opened; or whether the higher or lower authorities connived, the great public never heard! The Southern papers

ment of Stroud. There may have been convictions, and sentences of death may have been passed, and the criminals permitted to escape, or pardoned.

were watched for announcements of executive offers of reward for the prisoner's apprehension, but none ever appeared. The fugitive was not a fugitive slave. He might come to the North, if he pleased, without danger that the arm of the Federal Govern. ment would molest him! He was not guilty of rebelling against a slave owner's authority. He had only murdered a slave!

The frequency of such murders in South Carolina, so long ago as 1791, was publicly announced in her Courts of law, no one contradicting it. In the case of the State vs. McGee, Messrs. Pinkney and Ford, Counsel for the State, said: "The frequency of the offense (wilful murder of a slave) was owing to the nature of the punishment," &c., (i. e., a pecuniary fine.) (1 Bay's Reports, 164. Vide Stroud, p. 39.)

"In 1791, the Grand Jury for the District of Cheraw, (South Carolina,) made a presentment on the same subject, expressing their confidence that the Legislature would provide some other more effectual measures to prevent the FREQUENCY of crimes of this nature." (Matthew Carey's American Museum for February, 1791, Appendix, p. 10. Weld's Slavery, &c., p. 155.) Yet thirty more years elapsed before the penalty was changed, and still the law seems as powerless as ever. It is paralyzed by "the innocent legal relation" between an owner and his human chattel!

If any one doubts the frequency and the impunity of such murders, let him con over the attested facts in the book to which we have so frequently referred,

Weld's "Slavery as it is." Take a few specimens. On page 47 are four cases, related by Rev. William T. Allan, son of a slaveholding D.D. in Alabama.

(1.) "A man near Courtland, Ala., of the name of Thompson, recently shot a negro woman through the head, and put the pistol so close that her hair was singed. He did it in consequence of some difficulty in his dealings with her as a concubine. He buried her in a log heap; she was discovered by the buzzards gathering around it." (2.) “Two men, of the name of Wilson, found a fine-looking negro man at Dandridge's Quarter, without a pass, and flogged him so that he died in a short time. They were not punished." (3.) "Col. Blocker's overseer attempted to flog a negro. He refused to be flogged, whereupon the overseer seized an axe, and cleft his skull. The Colonel justified it." (4.) "One Jones whipped a woman to death for grabbing a potatoe hill."

Compare these four cases with the slave laws already cited. The second and fourth, being deaths by whipping, would pass, probably, as cases of "death under moderate correction." The third, Col. Blocker's overseer, would be justified by a Court of law as readily as by the Colonel. The slave was "resisting" or "offering to resist" the overseer, and was therefore an outlaw. The first case is not quite as clear. If the concubine "resisted or "offered to resist" Mr. Thompson's advances, whether revengeful or lustful, she came, plainly, into the same legal predicament, and was lawfully killed! For "the legal relation" must be maintained! But were not

these flagrant cases of murder? Take some other facts, furnished also by Mr. Allan on the page previous, (46.)

(1.) Mr. Turner stated that one of his uncles, in Caroline county, Virginia, had killed a womanbroke her skull with an axe-helve: she had insulted her mistress! No notice was taken of the affair. (2.) Mr. T. said that slaves were frequently murdered. (3.) In Mississippi a slave chanced to come forward hastily from eating, to hear the 'orders,' with a knife in his hand. The overseer, alarmed, raised his gun and shot him dead. He afterwards saw and confessed his mistake. But " no notice was taken" of the killing.

On page 50 will be found, by the testimony of Mrs. Nancy Lowry, a native of Kentucky, three cases of "premature deaths"-"generally believed by the neighbors that extreme whipping was the cause." Mr. Long, the inflictor and owner, was "a strict professor of the Christian religion," and "thought to be a very humane master." The victims, “John, Ned, and James, had wives." They were flogged frequently and "severely." "The cause of their flogging was, commonly, staying, a little over the time, with their wives!"

On page 97, in the testimony of Rev. Francis Hawley, there is a characteristic case. A son of a slave. holder "took," as was believed, "the wife of one of the negro men. The poor slave felt himself greatly injured, and expostulated with him. The wretch took his gun and deliberately shot him.