Virginia General Court to be hanged for the beating of his slave to death, the Virginia Gazette said:  “This man has justly incurred the penalties of the law and we hear will certainly suffer, which ought to be a warning to others to treat their slaves with more moderation."[32] In the nineteenth century the laws generally held the maiming or murder of slaves to be felonies in the same degree and with the same penalties as in cases where the victims were whites; and when the statutes were silent in the premises the courts felt themselves free to remedy the defect.[33]

[Footnote 30:  Martin, Louisiana Reports, XV, 142.]

[Footnote 31:  H.M.  Henry, Police Control of the Slave in South Carolina, pp. 69-79.]

[Footnote 32:  Virginia Gazette, Apr. 21, 1775, reprinted in the William and Mary College Quarterly, VIII, 36.]

[Footnote 33:  The State vs.  Jones, in Walker, Mississippi Reports, p. 83, reprinted in J.D.  Wheeler, The Law of Slavery, pp. 252-254.]

Despite the ferocity of the statutes and the courts, the fewness and the laxity of officials was such that from time to time other agencies were called into play.  For example the maraudings of runaway slaves camped in Belle Isle swamp, a score of miles above Savannah, became so serious and lasting that their haven had to be several times destroyed by the Georgia militia.  On one of these occasions, in 1786, a small force first employed was obliged to withdraw in the face of the blacks, and reinforcements merely succeeded in burning the huts and towing off the canoes, while the negroes themselves were safely in hiding.  Not long afterward, however, the gang was broken up, partly through the services of Creek and Catawba Indians who hunted the maroons for the prices on their heads.[34] The Seminoles, on the other hand, gave asylum to such numbers of runaways as to prompt invasions of their country by the United States army both before and after the Florida purchase.[35] On lesser occasions raids were made by citizen volunteers.  The swamps of the lower Santee River, for example, were searched by several squads in 1819, with the killing of two negroes, the capture of several others and the wounding of one of the whites as the result.[36]

[Footnote 34:  Georgia Colonial Records, XII, 325, 326; Georgia Gazette (Savannah), Oct. 19, 1786; Massachusetts Sentinel (Boston), June 13, 1787; Georgia State Gazette and Independent Register (Augusta), June 16, 1787.]

[Footnote 35:  Joshua R. Giddings, The Exiles of Florida (Columbus, Ohio, 1858).]

[Footnote 36:  Diary of Dr. Henry Ravenel, Jr., of St. John’s Parish, Berkeley County, S.C.  MS. in private possession.]