American Negro Slavery by Ulrich Bonnell Phillips

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[Footnote 10: _Boston Chronicle_, Sept. 26, 1768, confirmed by a
contemporary broadside: "_The Life and Dying Speech of Arthur, a Negro Man
who was executed at Worcester, October 20, 1786, for a rape committed on
the body of one Deborah Metcalfe_" (Boston, 1768).]

[Footnote 11: Augusta _Chronicle_, Mch. 29, 1811.]

[Footnote 12: American Historical Association _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 petition 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 petition. 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 petition 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 passed without any important demonstration. Tuesday morning the crowd
in the streets increased, and the excitement with it. A large and excited
multitude gathered early in the morning at the market house, and after
numerous violent harangues a leader was chosen, and resolutions passed 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 reassembled 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 circumstances 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
assembled, 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 participation
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 arsenal 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 mass 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_, XXXV.]

[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
buttressed 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, assigned
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_, XXXVI, 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_., XXXV, 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 molasses
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.

Some of the whites were descendants of the original freebooters, and
retained the temperament of their forbears; others were immigrant fortune
seekers. The white women were less than half as numerous as the men, and
black or yellow concubines were common substitutes for wives. The colony
was the French equivalent of Jamaica, but more prosperous and more
self-willed and self-indulgent. Its whites were impatient of outside
control, and resolute that the slaves be ruled with iron hand and that the
colored freemen be kept passive.

A plentiful discontent with bureaucracy and commercial restraint under the
old regime caused the planters to welcome the early news of reform projects
in France and to demand representation in the coming States General. But
the rapid progress of radical republicanism in that assembly threw most of
these into a royalist reaction, though the poorer whites tended still to
endorse the Revolution. But now the agitations of the _Amis des Noirs_
at Paris dismayed all the white islanders, while on the other hand the
National Assembly's "Declaration of the Rights of Man," together with its
decrees granting political equality in somewhat ambiguous form to free
persons of color, prompted risings in 1791 among the colored freemen in the
northern part of the colony and among the slaves in the center and south.
When reports of these reached Paris, the new Legislative Assembly revoked
the former measures by a decree of September 24, 1791, transferring all
control over negro status to the colonial assemblies. Upon receiving news
of this the mulattoes and blacks, with the courage of despair, spread ruin
in every district. The whites, driven into the few fortified places, begged
succor from France; but the Jacobins, who were now in control at Paris, had
a programme of their own. By a decree of April 4, 1792, the Legislative
Assembly granted full political equality to colored freemen and provided
for the dispatch of Republican commissioners to establish the new regime.
The administration of the colony by these functionaries was a travesty.
Most of the surviving whites emigrated to Cuba and the American continent,
carrying such of their slaves as they could command. The free colored
people, who at first welcomed the commissioners, unexpectedly turned
against them because of a decree of August 29, 1793, abolishing slavery.

At this juncture Great Britain, then at war with the French Republic,
intervened by sending an army to capture the colony. Most of the colored
freemen and the remaining whites rallied to the flag of these invaders; but
the slaves, now commanded by the famous Toussaint L'Ouverture, resisted
them effectually, while yellow fever decimated their ranks and paralyzed
their energies. By 1795 the two colored elements, the mulattoes who had
improvised a government on a slaveholding basis in the south, and the
negroes who dominated the north, each had the other alone as an active
enemy; and by the close of the century the mulattoes were either destroyed
or driven into exile; and Toussaint, while still acknowledging a nominal
allegiance to France, was virtual monarch of San Domingo. The peace of
Amiens at length permitted Bonaparte to send an army against the "Black
Napoleon." Toussaint soon capitulated, and in violation of the amnesty
granted him was sent to his death in a French dungeon. But pestilence again
aided the blacks, and the war was still raging when the breach of the peace
in Europe brought a British squadron to blockade and capture the remnant
of the French army. The new black leader, Dessalines, now proclaimed the
colony's independence, renaming it Hayti, and in 1804 he crowned himself
emperor. In the following year any further conflict with the local whites
was obviated by the systematic massacre of their small residue. In the
other French islands the developments, while on a much smaller scale, were
analogous.[46]

[Footnote 46: T. Lothrop Stoddard, _The French Revolution in San Domingo_
(Boston, 1914).]

In the Northern colonies the only signal disturbances were those of 1712
and 1741 at New York, both of which were more notable for the frenzy of
the public than for the formidableness of the menace. Anxiety had been
recurrent among the whites, particularly since the founding of a mission
school by Elias Neau in 1704 as an agent of the Society for the Propagation
of the Gospel. The plot was brewed by some Coromantee and Paw Paw negroes
who had procured the services of a conjuror to make them invulnerable;
and it may have been joined by several Spanish or Portuguese Indians
or mestizoes who had been captured at sea and unwarrantably, as they
contended, reduced to slavery. The rebels to the number of twenty-three
provided themselves with guns, hatchets, knives and swords, and chose the
dark of the moon in the small hours of an April night to set a house afire
and slaughter the citizens as they flocked thither. But their gunfire
caused the governor to send soldiers from the Battery with such speed
that only nine whites had been killed and several others wounded when the
plotters were routed. Six of these killed themselves to escape capture; but
when the woods were beaten and the town searched next day and an emergency
court sat upon the cases, more captives were capitally sentenced than the
whole conspiracy had comprised. The prosecuting officer, indeed, hounded
one of the prisoners through three trials, to win a final conviction after
two acquittals. The maxim that no one may twice be put in jeopardy for the
same offense evidently did not apply to slaves in that colony. Of those
convicted one was broken on the wheel, another hanged alive in chains;
nineteen more were executed on the gallows or at the stake, one of these
being sentenced "to be burned with a slow fire, that he may continue in
torment for eight or ten hours and continue burning in said fire until he
be dead and consumed to ashes"; and several others were saved only by the
royal governor's reprieve and the queen's eventual pardon. Such animosity
was exhibited by the citizens toward the "catechetical school" that for
some time its teacher hardly dared show himself on the streets. The furor
gradually subsided, however, and Mr. Neau continued his work for a dozen
years longer, and others carried it on after his death.[47]

[Footnote 47: E.B. O'Callaghan ed., _Documents Relative to the Colonial
History of New York_, V, 341, 342, 346, 356, 357, 371; _New York
Genealogical and Biographical Record_, XXI, 162, 163; New Orleans _Daily
Delta_, April 1, 1849; J.A. Doyle, _English Colonies in America_ (New York,
1907), V, pp. 258, 259.]

The commotion of 1741 was a panic among the whites of high and low degree,
prompted in sequel to a robbery and a series of fires by the disclosures of
Mary Burton, a young white servant concerning her master John Hughson, and
the confessions of Margaret Kerry, a young white woman of many aliases but
most commonly called Peggy, who was an inmate of Hughson's disreputable
house and a prostitute to negro slaves. When Mary testified under duress
that Hughson was not only a habitual recipient of stolen goods from the
negroes but was the head of a conspiracy among them which had already
effected the burning of many houses and was planning a general revolt, the
supreme court of the colony began a labor of some six months' duration in
bringing the alleged plot to light and punishing the alleged plotters.[48]
Hughson and his wife and the infamous Peggy were promptly hanged, and
likewise John Ury who was convicted of being a Catholic priest as well as a
conspirator; and twenty-nine negroes were sent with similar speed either to
the gallows or the stake, while eighty others were deported. Some of the
slaves made confessions after conviction in the hope of saving their lives;
and these, dubious as they were, furnished the chief corroborations of
detail which the increasingly fluent testimony of Mary Burton received.
Some of the confessions, however, were of no avail to those who made them.
Quack and Cuffee, for example, terror-stricken at the stake, made somewhat
stereotyped revelations; but the desire of the officials to stay the
execution with a view to definite reprieve was thwarted by their fear of
tumult by the throng of resentful spectators. After a staggering number of
sentences had been executed the star witness raised doubts against herself
by her endless implications, "for as matters were then likely to turn
out there was no guessing where or when there would be an end of
impeachments."[49] At length she named as cognizant of the plot several
persons "of known credit, fortune and reputations, and of religious
principles superior to a suspicion of being concerned in such detestable
practices; at which the judges were very much astonished."[50] This
farcical extreme at length persuaded even the obsessed magistrates to stop
the tragic proceedings.