“A man by the name of Waters was killed by his slaves, in Newberry District.  Three of them were tried before the court, and ordered to be burnt.  I was but a few miles distant at the time, and conversed with those who saw the execution.  The slaves were tied to a stake, and pitch pine wood piled around them, to which the fire was communicated.  Thousands were collected to witness this barbarous transaction. Other executions of this kind took place in various parts of the state, during my residence in it, from 1818 to 1824.  About three or four years ago, a young negro was burnt in Abbeville District, for an attempt at rape.”

In the fall of 1837, there was a rumor of a projected insurrection on the Red River, in Louisiana.  The citizens forthwith seized and hanged NINE SLAVES, AND THREE FREE COLORED MEN, WITHOUT TRIAL.  A few months previous to that transaction, a slave was seized in a similar manner and publicly burned to death, in Arkansas.  In July, 1835, the citizens of Madison county, Mississippi, were alarmed by rumors of an insurrection arrested five slaves and publicly executed them without trial.

The Missouri Republican, April 30, 1838, gives the particulars of the deliberate murder of a negro man named Tom, a cook on board the steamboat Pawnee, on her passage up from New Orleans to St. Louis.  Some of the facts stated by the Republican are the following: 

“On Friday night, about 10 o’clock, a deaf and dumb German girl was found in the storeroom with Tom.  The door was locked, and at first Tom denied she was there.  The girl’s father came.  Tom unlocked the door, and the girl was found secreted in the room behind a barrel.  The next morning some four or five of the deck passengers spoke to the captain about it.  This was about breakfast time.  Immediately after he left the deck, a number of the deck passengers rushed upon the negro, bound his arms behind his back and carried him forward to the bow of the boat.  A voice cried out ‘throw him overboard,’ and was responded to from every quarter of the deck—­and in an instant he was plunged into the river.  The whole scene of tying him and throwing him overboard scarcely occupied ten minutes, and was so precipitate that the officers were unable to interfere in time to save him.

“There were between two hundred and fifty and three hundred passengers on board.”

The whole process of seizing Tom, dragging him upon deck, binding his arms behind his back, forcing him to the bow of the boat, and throwing him overboard, occupied, the editor informs us, about TEN MINUTES, and of the two hundred and fifty or three hundred deck passengers, with perhaps as many cabin passengers, it does not appear that a single individual raised a finger to prevent this deliberate murder; and the cry “throw him overboard,” was it seems, “responded to from every quarter of the deck!”

Rev. JAMES A. THOME, of Augusta, Ky., son of Arthur Thome, Esq., till recently a slaveholder, published five years since the following description of a scene witnessed by him in New Orleans: