The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Part 3 of 4 eBook

American Anti-Slavery Society
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 1,269 pages of information about The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Part 3 of 4.

The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Part 3 of 4 eBook

American Anti-Slavery Society
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 1,269 pages of information about The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Part 3 of 4.
has probably as little real protection as in Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana; but generally throughout the former states and sections, the laws are not so absolutely powerless as in the latter three.  Deadly affrays, duels, murders, lynchings, &c., are, in proportion to the white population, as frequent and as rarely punished in lower Virginia as in Kentucky and Missouri; in North Carolina and South Carolina as in Tennessee; and in Georgia and Florida as in Alabama.

To insert the criminal statistics of the remaining slave states in detail, as those of the states already considered have been presented, would, we find, fill more space than can well be spared.  Instead of this, we propose to exhibit the state of society in all the slaveholding region bordering on the Atlantic, by the testimony of the slaveholders themselves, corroborated by a few plain facts.  Leaving out of view Florida, where law is the most powerless, and Maryland where probably it is the least so, we propose to select as a fair illustration of the actual state of society in the Atlantic slaveholding regions, North Carolina whose border is but 250 miles from the free states of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and Georgia which constitutes its south western boundary.

We will begin with GEORGIA.  This state was settled more than a century ago by a colony under General Oglethorpe.  The colony was memorable for its high toned morality.  One of its first regulations was an absolute prohibition of slavery in every form:  but another generation arose, the prohibition was abolished, a multitude of slaves were imported, the exercise of unlimited power over them lashed up passion to the spurning of all control, and now the dreadful state of society that exists in Georgia, is revealed by the following testimony out of her own mouth.

The editor of the Darien (Georgia) Telegraph, in his paper of November 6, 1838, published the following.

Murderous Attack.—­Between the hours of three and four o’clock, on Saturday last, the editor of this paper was attacked by FOURTEEN armed ruffians, and knocked down by repeated blows of bludgeons.  All his assailants were armed with pistols, dirks, and large clubs.  Many of them are known to us; but there is neither law nor justice to be had in Darien!  We are doomed to death by the employers of the assassins who attacked us on Saturday, and no less than our blood will satisfy them.  The cause alleged for this unmanly, base, cowardly outrage, is some expressions which occurred in an election squib, printed at this office, and extensively circulated through the county, before the election.  The names of those who surrounded us, when the attack was made, are, A. Lefils, jr. (son to the representative), Madison Thomas, Francis Harrison, Thomas Hopkins, Alexander Blue, George Wing, James Eilands, W.I.  Perkins, A.J.  Raymur:  the others we cannot at present recollect.  The two first, LEFILS and THOMAS struck us at the same time.  Pistols were levelled at us in all directions.  We can produce the most respectable testimony of the truth of this statement.”

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The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Part 3 of 4 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.