“When I was traveling through North Carolina, a black man, who was outlawed, being shot by one of his pursuers, and left wounded in the woods, they came to an ordinary where I had stopped to feed my horse, in order to procure a cart to bring the poor wretched object in.  Another, I was credibly informed, was shot, his head cut off, and carried in a bag by the perpetrators of the murder, who received the reward, which was said to be $200, continental currency, and that his head was stuck on a coal house at an iron works in Virginia—­and this for going to visit his wife at a distance.  Crawford gives an account of a man being gibbetted alive in South Carolina, and the buzzards came and picked out his eyes.  Another was burnt to death at a stake in Charleston, surrounded by a multitude of spectators, some of whom were people of the first rank; ... the poor object was heard to cry, as long as he could breathe, ‘not guilty—­not guilty.’”

The following is an illustration of the ‘public opinion’ of South Carolina about fifty years ago.  It is taken from Judge Stroud’s Sketch of the Slave Laws, page 39.

“I find in the case of ‘the State vs.  M’Gee,’ I Bay’s Reports, 164, it is said incidentally by Messrs. Pinckney and Ford, counsel for the state (of S.C.), ’that the frequency of the offence (wilful murder of a slave) was owing to the nature of the punishment’, &c....  This remark was made in 1791, when the above trial took place.  It was made in a public place—­a courthouse—­and by men of great personal respectability.  There can be, therefore, no question as to its truth, and as little of its notoriety.”

In 1791 the Grand Jury for the district of Cheraw, S.C. made a presentment, from which the following is an extract.

“We, the Grand Jurors of and for the district of Cheraw, do present the INEFFICACY of the present punishment for killing negroes, as a great defect in the legal system of this state:  and we do earnestly recommend to the attention of the legislature, that clause of the negro act, which confines the penalty for killing slaves to fine and imprisonment only:  in full confidence, that they will provide some other more effectual measures to prevent the FREQUENCY of crimes of this nature.”—­Matthew Carey’s American Museum, for Feb. 1791.—­Appendix, p. 10.

The following is a specimen of the ‘public opinion’ of Georgia twelve years since.  We give it in the strong words of COLONEL STONE, Editor of the New York Commercial Advertiser.  We take it from that paper of June 8, 1827.

“HUNTING MEN WITH DOGS.-A negro who had absconded from his master, and for whom a reward of $100 was offered, has been apprehended and committed to prison in Savannah.  The editor, who states the fact, adds, with as much coolness as though there were no barbarity in the matter, that he did not surrender till he was considerably MAIMED BY THE DOGS that had been set on him—­desperately fighting them—­one of which he badly cut with a sword.”