American Negro Slavery Part 38

[Footnote 12: American Historical a.s.sociation _Report_ for 1904, pp. 579, 580.]

[Footnote 13: Charleston _Observer_, Nov. 24, 1827.]

[Footnote 14: _Ibid_., Nov. 10, 1827.]

[Footnote 15: New Orleans _Delta_, June 23, 1849.]

[Footnote 16: New Orleans _Bee_, Sept. 27, 1842, reprinted in _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 121, 122.]

Other examples will show that lynchings were not altogether lacking in those days in sequel to such crimes. Near the village of Gallatin, Mississippi, in 1843, two slave men entered a farmer's house in his absence and after having gotten liquor from his wife by threats, "they forcibly took from her arms the infant babe and rudely throwing it upon the floor, they threw her down, and while one of them accomplished the fiendish design of a ravisher the other, pointing the muzzle of a loaded gun at her head, said he would blow out her brains if she resisted or made any noise." The miscreants then loaded a horse with plunder from the house and made off, but they were shortly caught by pursuing citizens and hanged. The local editor said on his own score when recounting the episode: "We have ever been and now are opposed to any kind of punishment being administered under the statutes of Judge Lynch; but ... a due regard for candor and the preservation of all that is held most sacred and all that is most dear to man in the domestic circles of life impels us to acknowledge the fact that if the perpetrators of this excessively revolting crime had been burned alive, as was at first decreed, their fate would have been too good for such diabolical and inhuman wretches."[17]

[Footnote 17: Gallatin, Miss., _Signal_, Feb. 27, 1843, reprinted in the _Louisiana Courier_ (New Orleans), Mch. 1, 1843.]

An editorial in the _Sentinel_ of Columbus, Georgia, described and discussed a local occurrence of August 12, 1851,[18] in a different tone:

[Footnote 18: Columbus _Sentinel_, reprinted in the Augusta _Chronicle_, Aug. 17, 1851. This item, which is notable in more than one regard, was kindly furnished by Prof. R.P. Brooks of the University of Georgia.]

"Our community has just been made to witness the most high-handed and humiliating act of violence that it has ever been our duty to chronicle....

At the May term of the Superior Court a negro man was tried and condemned on the charge of having attempted to commit rape upon a little white girl in this county. His trial was a fair one, his counsel was the best our bar afforded, his jury was one of the most intelligent that sat upon the criminal side of our court, and on patient and honest hearing he was found guilty and sentenced to be hung on Tuesday, the 12th inst. This, by the way, was the second conviction. The negro had been tried and convicted before, but his counsel had moved and obtained a new trial, which we have seen resulted like the first in a conviction.

"Notwithstanding his conviction, it was believed by some that the negro was innocent. Those who believed him innocent, in a spirit of mercy, undertook a short time since to procure his pardon; and a pet.i.tion to that effect was circulated among our citizens and, we believe, very numerously signed. This we think was a great error.... It is dangerous for the people to undertake to meddle with the majesty of the jury trial; and strange as it may sound to some people, we regard the unfortunate denouement of this case as but the extreme exemplification of the very principle which actuated those who originated this pet.i.tion. Each proceeded from a spirit of discontent with the decisions of the authorized tribunals; the difference being that in the one case peaceful means were used for the accomplishment of mistaken mercy, and in the other violence was resorted to for the attainment of mistaken justice.

"The pet.i.tion was sent to Governor Towns, and on Monday evening last the messenger returned with a full and free pardon to the criminal. In the meantime the people had begun to flock in from the country to witness the execution; and when it was announced that a pardon had been received, the excitement which immediately pervaded the streets was indescribable. Monday night pa.s.sed without any important demonstration. Tuesday morning the crowd in the streets increased, and the excitement with it. A large and excited mult.i.tude gathered early in the morning at the market house, and after numerous violent harangues a leader was chosen, and resolutions pa.s.sed to the effect that the mob should demand the prisoner at four o'clock in the afternoon, and if he should not be given up he was to be taken by force and executed. After this decision the mob dispersed, and early in the afternoon, upon the ringing of the market bell, it rea.s.sembled and proceeded to the jail. The sheriff of the county of course refused to surrender the negro, when he was overpowered, the prison doors broken open, and the unfortunate culprit dragged forth and hung.

"These are the facts, briefly and we believe accurately, stated. We do not feel now inclined to comment upon them. We leave them to the public, praying in behalf of our injured community all the charity which can be extended to an act so outraging, so unpardonable."

A similar occurrence in Sumter County, Alabama, in 1855 was reported with no expression of regret. A negro who had raped and murdered a young girl there was brought before the superior court in regular session. "When the case was called for trial a motion for change of venue to the county of Greene was granted. This so exasperated the citizens of Sumter (many of whom were in favor of summary punishment in the outset) that a large number of them collected on the 23d. ult., took him out of prison, chained him to a stake on the very spot where the murder was committed, and in the presence of two or three thousand negroes and a large number of white people,[19] burned him alive." This mention of negroes in attendance is in sharp contrast with their palpable absence on similar occasions in later decades. They were present, of course, as at legal executions, by the command of their masters to receive a lesson of deterrence. The wisdom of this policy, however, had already been gravely questioned. A Louisiana editor, for example, had written in comment upon a local hanging: "The practice of sending slaves to witness the execution of their fellows as a terror to them has many advocates, but we are inclined to doubt its efficacy. We took particular pains to notice on this occasion the effects which this horrid spectacle would produce on their minds, and our observation taught us that while a very few turned with loathing from the scene, a large majority manifested that levity and curiosity superinduced by witnessing a monkey show."[20]

[Footnote 19: _Southern Banner_ (Athens, Ga.), June 21, 1855.]

[Footnote 20: _Caddo Gazette_, quoted in the New Orleans _Bee_, April 5, 1845.]

For another case of lynching, which occurred in White County, Tennessee, in 1858, there is available merely the court record of a suit brought by the owners of the slave to recover pecuniary damages from those who had lynched him. It is incidentally recited, with strong reprehension by the court, that the negro was in legal custody under a charge of rape and murder when certain citizens, part of whom had signed a written agreement to "stand by each other," broke into the jail and hanged the prisoner.[21]

[Footnote 21: Head's _Tennessee Reports_, I, 336. For lynchings prompted by other crimes than rape see below, p. 474, footnote 60.]

In general the slaveholding South learned of crimes by individual negroes with considerable equanimity. It was the news or suspicion of concerted action by them which alone caused widespread alarm and uneasiness. That actual deeds of rebellion by small groups were fairly common is suggested by the numerous slaves convicted of murdering their masters and overseers in Virginia, as well as by chance items from other quarters. Thus in 1797 a planter in Screven County, Georgia, who had recently bought a batch of newly imported Africans was set upon and killed by them, and his wife's escape was made possible only by the loyalty of two other slaves.[22]

Likewise in Bullitt County, Kentucky, in 1844, when a Mr. Stewart threatened one of his slaves, that one and two others turned upon him and beat him to death;[23] and in Arkansas in 1845 an overseer who was attacked under similar circ.u.mstances saved his life only with the aid of several neighbors and through the use of powder and ball.[24] Such episodes were likely to grow as the reports of them flew over the countryside. For instance in 1856 when an unruly slave on a plantation shortly below New Orleans upon being threatened with punishment seized an axe and was thereupon shot by his overseer, the rumor of an insurrection quickly ran to and through the city.[25]

[Footnote 22: _Columbian Museum and Savannah Advertiser_ (Savannah, Ga.), Feb. 24, 1797.]

[Footnote 23: Paducah _Kentuckian_, quoted in the New Orleans _Bee_, Apr.

3, 1844.]

[Footnote 24: New Orleans _Bee_, Aug. 1, 1845, citing the Arkansas _Southern Shield_.]

[Footnote 25: New Orleans _Daily Tropic_, Feb. 16, 1846.]

If all such rumors as this, many of which had equally slight basis, were a.s.sembled, the catalogue would reach formidable dimensions. A large number doubtless escaped record, for the newspapers esteemed them "a delicate subject to touch";[26] and many of those which were recorded, we may be sure, have not come to the investigator's notice. A survey of the revolts and conspiracies and the rumors of such must nevertheless be attempted; for their influence upon public thought and policy, at least from time to time, was powerful.

[Footnote 26: _Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), Dec. 23, 1856, editorial.]

Early revolts were of course mainly in the West Indies, for these were long the chief plantation colonies. No more than twenty years after the first blacks were brought to Hispaniola a score of Joloff negroes on the plantation of Diego Columbus rose in 1622 and were joined by a like number from other estates, to carry death and desolation in their path until they were all cut down or captured.[27] In the English islands precedents of conspiracy were set before the blacks became appreciably numerous. A plot among the white indentured servants in Barbados in 1634 was betrayed and the ringleader executed;[28] and another on a larger scale in 1649 had a similar end.[29] Incoming negroes appear not to have taken a similar course until 1675 when a plot among them was betrayed by one of their number. The governor promptly appointed captains to raise companies, as a contemporary wrote,[30] "for repressing the rebels, which accordingly was done, and abundance taken and apprehended and since put to death, and the rest kept in a more stricter manner." This quietude continued only until 1692 when three negroes were seized on charge of conspiracy. One of these, on promise of pardon, admitted the existence of the plot and his own partic.i.p.ation therein. The two others were condemned "to be hung in chains on a gibbet till they were starved to death, and their bodies to be burned." These endured the torture "for four days without making any confession, but then gave in and promised to confess on promise of life. One was accordingly taken down on the day following. The other did not survive." The tale as then gathered told that the slaves already pledged were enough to form six regiments, and that arrangements were on foot for the seizure of the forts and a.r.s.enal through bribery among their custodians. The governor when reporting these disclosures expressed the hope that the severe punishment of the leaders, together with a new act offering freedom as reward to future informers, would make the colony secure.[31] There seems to have been no actual revolt of serious dimensions in Barbados except in 1816 when the blacks rose in great ma.s.s and burned more than sixty plantations, as well as killing all the whites they could catch, before troops arrived from neighboring islands and suppressed them.[32]

[Footnote 27: J.A. Saco, _Esclavitud en el Nuevo Mondo_ (Barcelona, 1879), pp. 131-133.]

[Footnote 28: Maryland Historical Society _Fund Publications_, x.x.xV.]

[Footnote 29: Richard Ligon, _History of Barbados_ (London, 1657).]

[Footnote 30: Charles Lincoln ed., _Narratives of the Indian Wars, 1675-1699_ (New York, 1913), pp. 71, 72.]

[Footnote 31: _Calendar of State Papers, America and West Indies, 1689-1692_, pp. 732-734.]

[Footnote 32: _Louisiana Gazette_ (New Orleans), June 17, 1816.]

In Jamaica a small outbreak in 1677[33] was followed by another, in Clarendon Parish, in 1690. When these latter insurgents were routed by the whites, part of them, largely Coromantees it appears, fled to the nearby mountain fastnesses where, under the chieftainship of Cudjoe, they became securely established as a community of marooned freemen. Welcoming runaway slaves and living partly from depredations, they made themselves so troublesome to the countryside that in 1733 the colonial government built forts at the mouths of the Clarendon defiles and sent expeditions against the Maroon villages. Cudjoe thereupon shifted his tribe to a new and better b.u.t.tressed vale in Trelawney Parish, whither after five years more spent in forays and reprisals the Jamaican authorities sent overtures for peace. The resulting treaty, signed in 1738, gave recognition to the Maroons, a.s.signed them lands and rights of hunting, travel and trade, pledged them to render up runaway slaves and criminals in future, and provided for the residence of an agent of the island government among the Maroons as their superintendent. Under these terms peace prevailed for more than half a century, while the Maroon population increased from 600 to 1400 souls. At length Major James, to whom these blacks were warmly attached, was replaced as superintendent by Captain Craskell whom they disliked and shortly expelled. Tumults and forays now ensued, in 1795, the effect of which upon the sentiment of the whites was made stronger by the calamitous occurrences in San Domingo. Negotiations for a fresh accommodation fell through, whereupon a conquest was undertaken by a joint force of British troops, Jamaican militia and free colored auxiliaries. The prowess of the Maroons and the ruggedness of their district held all these at bay, however, until a body of Spanish hunters with trained dogs was brought in from Cuba. The Maroons, conquered more by fright than by force, now surrendered, whereupon they were transported first to Nova Scotia and thence at the end of the century to the British protectorate in Sierra Leone.[34] Other Jamaican troubles of some note were a revolt in St. Mary's Parish in 1765,[35] and a more general one in 1832 in which property of an estimated value of $1,800,000 was destroyed before the rebellion was put down at a cost of some $700,000 more.[36] There were troubles likewise in various other colonies, as with insurgents in Antigua in 1701[37] and[38] 1736 and Martinique and Guadeloupe in 1752;[39] with maroons in Grenada in 1765,[40]

Dominica in 1785[41] and Demarara in[42] 1794; and with conspirators in Cuba in 1825[43] and St. Croix[44] and Porto Rico in 1848.[45]

[Footnote 33: _Calendar of State Papers, America and West Indies, 1689-1692_, p. 101.]

[Footnote 34: R.C. Dallas, _History of the Maroons_ (London, 1803).]

[Footnote 35: _Gentleman's Magazine_, x.x.xVI, 135.]

[Footnote 36: _Niles' Register_, XLIV, 124.]

[Footnote 37: _Calendar of State Papers, America and West Indies_, 1701, pp. 721, 722.]

[Footnote 38: _South Carolina Gazette_ (Charleston), Jan. 29, 1837.]

[Footnote 39: _Gentleman's Magazine_, XXII, 477.]

[Footnote 40: _Ibid_., x.x.xV, 533.]

[Footnote 41: Charleston, S.C., _Morning Post and Daily Advertiser_, Jan.

26, 1786.]

[Footnote 42: Henry Bolinbroke, _Voyage to the Demerary_ (Philadelphia, 1813), pp. 200-203.]

[Footnote 43: _Louisiana Gazette_, Oct. 12, 1825.]

[Footnote 44: New Orleans _Bee_, Aug. 7, 1848.]

[Footnote 45: _Ibid_., Aug. 16 and Dec. 15, 1848.]

Everything else of such nature, however, was eclipsed by the prodigious upheaval in San Domingo consequent upon the French Revolution. Under the flag of France the western end of that island had been converted in the course of the eighteenth century from a nest of buccaneers into the most thriving of plantation colonies. By 1788 it contained some 28,000 white settlers, 22,000 free negroes and mulattoes, and 405,000 slaves. It had nearly eight hundred sugar estates, many of them on a huge scale. The soil was so fertile and the climate so favorable that on many fields the sugar-cane would grow perennially from the same roots almost without end.

Exports of coffee and cotton were considerable, of sugar and mola.s.ses enormous; and the volume was still rapidly swelling by reason of the great annual importations of African slaves. The colony was by far the most valued of the French overseas possessions.