The Laws are unequal—their administration despotic—their execution barbarous. Even this is exceeded by “Lynch Law.”

     THE slave, who is but “a chattel” on all other occasions, with not one solitary attribute of personality accorded to him, becomes “a person” whenever he is to be punished! He is the only being in the universe to whom is denied all self-direction and free agency, but who is, nevertheless, held responsible for his conduct, and amenable to law. Forbidden to read the law, and kept as ignorant and as unenlightened as possible, he is nevertheless accounted criminal for acts which are deemed innocent in others, and punished with a severity from which all others are exempted. He is under the control of law, though unprotected by law, and can know law only as an enemy, and not as a friend.

     The following statement is evidently as favorable a one as could be made, yet it attests the main facts of the case; and what seems to have been intended as a palliation is the strongest condemnation of the slave system, especially of this feature of it.

     “Much has been said of the disparity of punishment between the white inhabitants and the slaves and negroes of the same State; that slaves are punished with much more severity, for the commission of similar crimes by white persons, than the latter. The charge is undoubtedly true to a considerable extent. It must be remembered that the primary object of the enactment of penal laws is the protection and security of those who make them.* THE SLAVE HAS NO AGENCY IN MAKING THEM. He is indeed one cause of the apprehended evils to the other class, which those laws are expected to remedy. That he should be held amenable for the violation of those rules established for the security of the other, is the natural result of the state in which he is placed. And the severity of those rules will always bear a relation to that danger, real or ideal, of the other class.† It has been so among all nations, and will ever continue to be so, while the disparity between bond and free remains. In a practical treatise it would probably be considered out of place to collect the various statutes in relation to whipping and other punishment of slaves, to be found in the statute books of the various States.” (Note in Wheeler’s Law of Slavery, pp. 222-3.)

     The punishment of slaves by their owners has already been examined. Their punishment by civil government, or by society, is the topic now under review. Not a few specimens have fallen under our notice already, as connected with other points of inquiry. We must briefly recall these, and connect them with others of a like character.

     We have seen how the “cruel punishments” inflicted by the master are expressly sanctioned by the Legislatures, and how the public arm, with its sheriffs and prisons, is at the beck of the slaveholder, as his agents and instruments, whenever he wishes his slaves punished! We have seen, too, some few specimens of direct penal infliction upon the slave by the Government. For the crime of earning property and making bargains, we have seen his property seized and confiscated for the benefit of the whites, who pretended to doubt whether he could take care of himself! For the misdemeanor of “hiring himself out,” even with the consent of his master, we have seen him “apprehended” as a felon. For seeking liberty, and the protection of law, we have seen him proclaimed an outlaw, and “lawfully killed!” For attending a religious meeting in the evening, conducted by whites, and staying till the close of the meeting, we have seen him, with his wife and children, locked up in the watch-house till morning, with no bed but the floor. For keeping a weapon or club, we have seen him subjected, by a cowardly code, to public whipping! For being absent without a “pass,” to

visit a wife or child, we have seen him under the same sentence! For riding on horseback, whipped or branded. For losing a cause at Court, when sueing for freedom, any “corporal punishment, not extending to life or limb,” with the hazard of “death by moderate correction.”

     Free negroes, for entertaining or assisting fugitive slaves, or giving or selling certificates of freedom, we have seen subjected to heavy fines; and, in default of payment, sale into slavery. For being arrested on suspicion of being slaves, we have seen them fined and enslaved. For “presuming to strike a white person,” punished with whipping or cropping! In the case of slaves, for the second or third offense, DEATH!

     All these are but specimens of similar legislation. For taking away or loosing a boat, a slave in South Carolina is to receive thirty-nine lashes; “for the second offense, shall forfeit and have cut off from his head ONE EAR.” (2 Brev. Dig., 228.) So, as to the first offense, in North Carolina and Tennessee. (Haywood’s Manual, 78.)

     “For having any article of property [in Kentucky] without a ticket of permission from his master, particularly specifying the same, and authorizing it to be sold by the slave, ten lashes, by order of the captain of the patrollers;” and “if the slave be taken before a magistrate, thirty-nine lashes may be ordered.” (Littell and Swigert’s Dig., 11.) Also in North Carolina and Tennessee. (Haywood’s Manual, 529.) And in Mississippi. (Rev. Code, 390.)

     A slave in Kentucky, being at an unlawful assembly,* the captain of patrollers may inflict ten lashes upon him. (Littell and Swigert’s Dig., 981; also 2 Missouri Laws, 741, sect. 2; and ibid., 614.) If taken before a magistrate, he may direct thirty-nine lashes.

     To beat the Patuxent river, (to catch fish,) ten lashes. (Maryland Laws, 1796, chap. 32, sect. 3, &c., &c.)

     In North Carolina, a “slave, hunting with dogs in the woods even of his master, is subjected to a whipping of thirty lashes.” (Haywood’s Manual, 524, Act of 1753.)

     We reserve for their appropriate chapters, the penal laws against mental instruction, and assembling together for religious worship, except with white persons.

     The reader will have noticed that a large portion of the offenses thus punished are not considered offenses when committed by white persons! Another feature deserves notice.

     “In Virginia, by the Revised Code (of 1819,) there are seventy-one offenses for which the penalty is DEATH when committed by slaves, and imprisonment when committed by whites.” (Jay’s Inquiry, p. 134.)

     In Mississippi there are seventeen offenses punishable with DEATH when committed by slaves, which, if committed by white persons, are either

punished by fines or imprisonment, or punishment “not provided for by statute,’’ or at “common law.” (Stroud’s Sketch, p. 110-11.)

     “Where human life is so cheap, and human suffering so little regarded, it is not to be expected that the dispensers of slave justice will submit to be troubled with all those forms and ceremonies which the common law has devised for the protection of innocence. We have seen that, in many instances, any white person may, instanter, discharge the functions of judge, jury, and executioner. In innumerable instances, all these functions are united in a single justice of the peace; and in South Carolina, Virginia, and Louisiana, LIFE may be taken, according to law, without intervention of grand or petit jurors. In other States a trial by jury is granted in capital cases; but in no one State, it is believed, is it thought worth while to trouble a grand jury with presenting a slave. In most of the slave States, the ordinary tribunal for slaves charged with offenses not capital, is composed of justices and freeholders, or of justices only. A white man cannot be convicted of misdemeanor, except by the unanimous verdict of twelve of his peers. In Louisiana, if the Court is equally divided as to the guilt of a slave, judgment is rendered against him!” (Jay’s Inquiry, p. 135.)

     The proper idea of trial by jury includes a trial by the “peers” or EQUALS of the accused. There is no such jury trial for the slave! Trial by jury of slaves would soon upset the “legal relation” of slave owner!

     In Tennessee, the sheriff is empowered to make selection of “three justices to preside on the trial, and twelve housekeepers being SLAVEHOLDERS to serve as a jury” !!! (Tennessee Laws of 1819, chap. 35.) By a modification of this law in 1831, “Householders may serve as jurors, if slaveholders cannot be had”! (Child’s Appeal, p. 70.)

     “In 1832, thirty-five slaves were executed in Charleston, in pursuance of the sentence of a Court consisting of two justices and five freeholders, on charge of an intended insurrection. No indictments, no summoning of jurors, no challenges for cause or favor, no seclusion of the triers from intercourse with those who might bias their judgment, preceded this unparalleled destruction of human life.” (Jay’s Inquiry, p. 135.)

     Though no colored person, bond or free, can testify in any case where any white person is concerned, yet the evidence of “all free Indians without oath, and of any slave without oath,” may be taken for or against a slave! And among the “meritorious services” for which freedom is conferred, the most important is “information of crimes committed by a slave.” What a temptation for one slave to bear false testimony against another! See Stroud’s Sketch, p. 126, where the authorities are cited for several States where this law prevails, viz: South Carolina, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Mississippi; with conditions, in Georgia and Louisiana.

     The law of South Carolina provides expressly, that slave trials shall proceed “in the most summary

and expeditious manner;” and also that, in case of conviction, the “Justice shall award such manner of death” as will “be most effectual to deter others,” &c. (James’s Dig., 392-3.) This authorized “the burning of a negro woman to death, as may be found in the daily prints of 1820.” (Stroud, p.124.) Any other tortures might be inflicted.

     “The last authorized edition of the laws of Maryland” (said Judge Stroud, in 1827) authorizes “to have the right hand cut off, to be hanged in the usual manner, the head severed from the body, the body divided into four quarters, and the head and quarters set up in the most public places of the county where such fact was committed.” (Stroud, p. 117.)

     The burning to death a free colored man near St. Louis, the frequent infliction of murderous outrages by irresponsible “Lynch Committees” all over the South, by the testimony of their own journals, may assure us that, in the public administration of slave punishments, “the people are no better than their laws,” but much “worse!”

     Communities tolerating such laws must become lawless; must lose the conception and the proper definition of LAW, in its just sense. They must be at once in a condition of despotism and of anarchy. And such is the known state of society at the South.

     And yet, no practical business man, who looks over, carefully, the whole ground, and knows human nature, and the circumstances of the times, will be likely to conclude that any better or milder code, or

method of administration, could preserve “the innocent legal relation of slave ownership!” If THAT is to be tolerated, all the rest is to be left where it is! Indeed, the Note of Mr. Wheeler, already quoted, (Wheeler’s Law of Slavery, pp. 222-3,) very nearly expresses this idea; and in looking over his few reported cases on this subject, we find nothing to disparage the conclusion.

     We notice the following items, as the most important:

     “A slave tried for a capital crime may be convicted on testimony of a slave, though uncorroborated by pregnant circumstances.” (Wheeler, p. 204. Case of the State vs. Ben, Dec. T., 1821; 1 Hawks’ N. C. Rep., 434. Opinion of Judge Badger, Judge Hall dissenting.)

     “A slave on trial for a capital felony is entitled to a jury of slave owners.” (Wheeler, p. 212. Case of the State vs. Jim, Dec. T., 1826; 1 Devereaux’s N. C. Rep., 142.)

     “On an indictment of a slave for a capital offense, the master cannot be compelled to testify.” (The State vs. Charity, Dec. T., 1830; 2 Devereaux’s N. C. Rep., 214.) In delivering his opinion, Judge Ruffin said: “The privilege not to testify, on the ground of interest, is that of the master, not of the slave. It may consequently be waived by the former. He may himself prosecute, and give evidence against his slave.” “Could I separate her [the slave’s] rights from those of the witness, [her master,] I would do so, and let the verdict stand, [a verdict

of conviction for murder.] But they are so connected, that justice cannot be done to the master without giving to the slave the benefit of it. We cannot restore him his PROPERTY, without yielding her another trial for her life; nor reverse the judgment for the costs without reversing it altogether. I therefore conclude, though with great hesitation, that, as the master did object to be sworn, there must be a new trial.” (Wheeler, pp. 214-15.)

     We see here the sacred rights of public justice on the one hand, (where the prisoner was charged with the murder of her own child,) and the sacred rights of the accused to an impartial trial for her life, BOTH treated as inferior and minor interests, which must bend to the slave master’s right of property in the accused! If she was acquitted, as she probably was, at the new trial, it was not as a matter of justice or of mercy towards the accused or the murdered, but as an act of protection to slave property!

     “Free persons of color are entitled to trial by jury.” (Wheeler, p. 222. Bore vs. Bush, 18 Martin’s Lou. Rep., 1.) A jury, doubtless, of white men, NOT “a jury of their peers” or equals! This is no “trial by jury” deserving the name.