Whereas complaint upon oath has this day been made to us, two of the
justices of the peace for the said State and county aforesaid, by Guilford Horn,
of Edgecombe County, that a certain male slave belonging to him, named
Harry, a carpenter by trade, about forty years old, five feet five inches high,
or thereabouts; yellow complexion; stout built; with a scar on his left leg
(from the cut of an axe); has very thick lips; eyes deep sunk in his head;
forehead very square; tolerably loud voice; has lost one or two of his upper
teeth; and has a very dark spot on his jaw, supposed to be a mark--hath
absented himself from his master's service, and is supposed to be lurking about in
this county, committing acts of felony or other misdeeds; these are, therefore,
in the name of the State aforesaid, to command the said slave forthwith to sur-
render himself, and return home to his said master; and we do hereby, by virtue
of the Act of Assembly in such cases made and provided, intimate and declare,
that if the said slave Harry doth not surrender himself and return home imme-
diately after the publication of these presents, that any person or persons may
kill and destroy the said slave by such means as he or they may think fit,
without accusation or impeachment of any crime or offence for so doing, and
without incurring any penalty or forfeiture thereby.
Given under our hands and seals, this 29th day of June, 1850.
James T. Miller, J. P. [Seal.]
W. C. Bettencourt, J. P. [Seal.]
One Hundred and Twenty-five Dollars Reward will be paid for the
delivery of the said Harry to me at Tosnott Depot, Edgecombe County, or for
his confinement in any jail in the State, so that I can get him; or One Hundred
and Fifty Dollars will be given for his head.
He was lately heard from in Newbern, where he called himself Henry Barnes
(or Burns), and will be likely to continue the same name, or assume that of
Copage or Farmer. He has a free mulatto woman for a wife, by the name of
Sally Bozeman, who has lately removed to Wilmington, and lives in that part of
the town called Texas, where he will likely be lurking.
Masters of vessels are particularly cautioned against harbouring or concealing
the said negro on board their vessels, as the full penalty of the law will be rigo-
rously enforced.
June 29th, 1850. Guilford Horn.
There is an inkling of history and romance about the descrip-
tion of this same Harry, who is thus publicly set up to be
killed in any way that any of the negro-hunters of the swamps
may think the most piquant and enlivening. It seems he is a
carpenter--a powerfully-made man, whose thews and sinews
might be a profitable acquisition to himself. It appears also
that he has a wife, and the advertiser intimates that possibly he
may be caught prowling about somewhere in her vicinity. This
indicates sagacity in the writer, certainly. Married men gene-
rally have a way of liking the society of their wives; and it
strikes us, from what we know of the nature of carpenters here
in New England, that Harry was not peculiar in this respect.
Let us further notice the portrait of Harry:--“Eyes deep sunk
in his head; forehead very square.” This picture reminds us of
what a persecuting old ecclesiastic once said in the days of the
Port-Royalists, of a certain truculent abbess, who stood obsti-
nately to a certain course, in the face of the whole power,
temporal and spiritual, of the Romish Church, in spite of fining,
imprisoning, starving, whipping, beating, and other enlightening
argumentative processes, not wholly peculiar, it seems, to that
age. “You will never subdue that woman,” said the eccle-
siastic, who was a phrenologist before his age; “she's got a
square head, and I have always noticed that people with square
heads never can be turned out of their course.” We think it
very probable that Harry, with his “square head,” is just one of
this sort. He is probably one of those articles which would be
extremely valuable, if the owner could only get the use of him.
His head is well enough, but he will use it for himself. It is of
no use to anyone but the wearer; and the master seems to sym-
bolise this state of things, by offering twenty-five dollars more
for the head without the body, than he is willing to give for
head, man, and all. Poor Harry! We wonder whether they have
caught him yet; or whether the impenetrable thickets, the
gators of the swamps, more humane than the slave-hunter, have
interposed their uncouth and loathsome forms to guard the only
fastness in Carolina where a slave can live in freedom.
It is not, then, in mere poetic fiction that the humane and
graceful pen of Longfellow has drawn the following picture:--
In the dark fens of the Dismal Swamp
The hunted negro lay; He saw the fire of the midnight camp,
And heard at times the horse's tramp,
And a bloodhound's distant bay. Where will-o'-the-wisps and glow-worms shine,
In bulrush and in brake; Where waving mosses shroud the pine,
And the cedar grows, and the poisonous vine
Is spotted like the snake;
Where hardly a human foot could pass,
Or a human heart would dare,-- On the quaking turf of the green morass
He crouched in the rank and tangled grass,
Like a wild beast in his lair. A poor old slave! infirm and lame,
Great scars deformed his face; On his forehead he bore the brand of shame,
And the rags that hid his mangled frame
Were the livery of disgrace. All things above were bright and fair,
All things were glad and free; Lithe squirrels darted here and there,
And wild birds filled the echoing air
With songs of liberty! On him alone was the doom of pain,
From the morning of his birth; On him alone the curse of Cain*
Fell like the flail on the garnered grain,
And struck him to the earth. The civilized world may and will ask, in what State this law
has been drawn, and passed, and revised, and allowed to appear
at the present day on the revised statute-book, and to be
executed in the year of Our Lord 1850, as the above-cited
extracts from its most respectable journals show. Is it some
heathen, Kurdish tribe, some nest of pirates, some horde of
barbarians, where destructive gods are worshipped, and libations
to their honour poured from human skulls? The civilized world
will not believe it, but it is actually a fact, that this law has
been made, and is still kept in force, by men in every other
respect than what relates to their slave code, as high-minded, as
enlightened, as humane, as any men in Christendom; by citizens
of a State which glories in the blood and hereditary Christian
institutions of Scotland. Curiosity to know what sort of men
the legislators of North Carolina might be, led the writer to
examine with some attention the proceedings and debates of the
convention of that State, called to amend its constitution, which
assembled at Raleigh, June 4th, 1835. It is but justice to
say that in these proceedings, in which all the different and
perhaps conflicting interests of the various parts of the State
were discussed, there was an exhibition of candour, fairness, and
moderation, of gentlemanly honour and courtesy in the treat-
ment of opposing claims, and of an overruling sense of the
obligations of law and religion, which certainly have not always
been equally conspicuous in the proceedings of deliberative
bodies in such cases. It simply goes to show that one can
judge nothing of the religion or of the humanity of individuals
from what seems to us objectionable practice, where they have
been educated under a system entirely incompatible with both.
Such is the very equivocal character of what we call virtue.
It could not be for a moment supposed that such men as
Judge Ruffin, or many of the gentlemen who figure in the
debates alluded to, would ever think of availing themselves of
the savage permissions of such a law. But what then? It
follows that the law is a direct permission, letting loose upon
the defenceless slave that class of men who exist in every com-
munity, who have no conscience, no honour, no shame; who are
too far below public opinion to be restrained by that, and from
whom accordingly this provision of the law takes away the only
available restraint of their fiendish natures. Such men are not
peculiar to the South. It is unhappily too notorious that they
over; but they can only arrive at full maturity in wickedness
under a system where the law clothes them with absolute and
irresponsible power.
* This man was burned alive.
† The old statute of 1741 had some features still more edifying. That provides
that said “proclamation shall be published on a Sabbath day, at the door of
every church or chapel, or for want of such, at the place where divine service shall
be performed in the said county, by the parish clerk or reader, immediately after
divine service.”--Potter's Revisal, i. 166. What a peculiar appropriateness there
must have been in this proclamation, particularly after a sermon on the love of
Christ, or an exposition of the text “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself!”
* Be it further enacted, That when any slave shall be legally outlawed in any of
Potter's Revisal, ch. 467, § 2.
the counties within mentioned, the owner of which shall reside in
one of the said counties, and the said slave shall be killed in conse-
quence of such outlawry, the value of such slave shall be ascertained
by a jury which shall be empanelled at the succeeding court of the
county where the said slave was killed, and a certificate of such valuation shall
be given by the clerk of the court to the owner of said slave, who shall be
entitled to receive two-thirds of such valuation from the sheriff of the county
wherein the slave was killed. (Extended to other counties in 1797.--Potter,
ch. 480, § 1. Now obsolete.)
* Gen. iv. 14: “And it shall come to pass that every one that findeth me shall
slay me.”
CHAPTER V.
PROTECTIVE ACTS OF SOUTH CAROLINA AND LOUISIANA--THE
IRON COLLAR OF LOUISIANA AND NORTH CAROLINA.
Thus far by way of considering the protective Acts of North
Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee.
Certain miscellaneous protective Acts of various other States
will now be cited, merely as specimens of the spirit of legislation.
In South Carolina, the Act of 1740 punished the wilful,
Stroud, p. 39. 2 Brevard's Digest, p.241.
deliberate murder of a slave by disfranchisement, and
by a fine of seven hundred pounds current money, or,
in default of payment, imprisonment for seven years.
But the wilful murder of a slave, in the sense contemplated in
this law, is a crime which would not often occur. The kind of
murder which was most frequent among masters or overseers was
guarded against by another section of the same Act--how
adequately the reader will judge for himself from the following
quotation:--
Stroud's Sketch, p. 40. 2 Brevard's Digest, 241. James' Digest, 392.
If any person shall, on a sudden heat or passion, or by undue
correction, kill his own slave, or the slave of any other person, he
shall forfeit the sum of three hundred and fifty pounds current
money.
In 1821 the Act punishing the wilful murder of the slave only
with fine or imprisonment was mainly repealed, and it was enacted
that such crime should be punished by death; but the latter
section, which relates to killing the slave in sudden heat or
passion, or by undue correction, has been altered only by diminish-
ing the pecuniary penalty to a fine of five hundred dollars,
authorising also imprisonment for six months.
The next protective statute to be noticed is the following from
the Act of 1740, South Carolina:--
In case any person shall wilfully cut out the tongue, put out the eye, * * *
Stroud, p.240 2 Brevard's Digest, 241.
or cruelly scald, burn, or deprive any slave of any limb or mem-
ber, or shall inflict any other cruel punishment, other than by
whipping or beating with a horsewhip, cow-skin, switch, or small
stick, or by putting irons on, or confining or imprisoning such slave, every such
person shall, for every such offence, forfeit the sum of one hundred pounds, current
money.
The language of this law, like many other of these protective
enactments, is exceedingly suggestive. The first suggestion that
occurs is, What sort of an institution, and what sort of a state of
society is it, that called out a law worded like this? Laws are
generally not made against practices that do not exist, and exist
with some degree of frequency.
The advocates of slavery are very fond of comparing it to
the apprentice system of England and America. Let us suppose
that in the British Parliament, or in a New England Legislature,
the following law is proposed, under the title of “An Act for the
Protection of Apprentices,” &c.:--
In case any person shall wilfully cut out the tongue, put out the eye, or cruelly
scald, burn, or deprive any apprentice of any limb or member, or shall inflict any
other cruel punishment, other than by whipping or beating with a horsewhip,
cow-skin, switch, or small stick, or by putting irons on, or confining or imprisoning
such apprentice, every such person shall, for every such offence, forfeit the sum of
one hundred pounds, current money.
What a sensation such a proposed law would make in England
may be best left for Englishmen to say; but in New England it
would simply constitute the proposer a candidate for Bedlam.
Yet that such a statute is necessary in South Carolina is evident
enough, if we reflect that, because there is no such statute in
Virginia, it has been decided that a wretch who perpetrates all
these enormities on a slave cannot even be indicted for it, unless
the slave dies.
But let us look further. What is to be the pen
alty when
any of these fiendish things are done?
Why, the man forfeits a hundred pounds, current money.
Surely he ought to pay as much as that for doing so very unne-
cessary an act, when the Legislature bountifully allows him to
inflict any torture which revengeful ingenuity could devise, by
means of horsewhip, cowskin, switch, or small stick, or putting
irons on, or confining and imprisoning. One would surely
think that here was sufficient scope and variety of legalised
means of torture to satisfy any ordinary appetite for vengeance.
It would appear decidedly that any more piquant varieties of
agony ought to be an extra charge. The advocates of slavery
are fond of comparing the situation of the slave with that of the
English labourer. We are not aware that the English labourer
has been so unfortunate as to be protected by any enactment
like this since the days of villeinage.
Judge Stroud says that the same law, substantially, has been
Stroud's Sketch,p.41.
1 Mar. Digest, 654.
adopted in Louisiana. It is true that the civil code
of Louisiana thus expresses its humane inten-
tions:--
The slave is entirely subject to the will of his master, who may correct and
chastise him, though not with unusual rigour, nor so as to maim or mutilate him,
or to expose him to the danger of loss of life, or to cause his death.
-- The expression “unusual rigour” is suggestive again. It
will afford large latitude for a jury, in States where slaves are in
the habit of dying under moderate correction; where outlawed
slaves may be killed by any means which any person thinks fit;
and where laws have to be specifically made against scalding,
burning, cutting out the tongue, putting out the eye, &c. What
will be thought unusual rigour? This is a question, certainly,
upon which persons in States not so constituted can have no
means of forming an opinion.
In one of the newspaper extracts with which we prefaced our
account, the following protective Act of Louisiana is alluded
to as being particularly satisfactory and efficient. We give it
as quoted by Judge Stroud in his Sketch, p. 58, giving his
reference:--
No master shall be compelled to sell his slave, but in one of two cases, to wit: