louisa picquet, the octoroon: or inside views of - Negro Artist

Louisa Picquet, the Octoroon 54
24.03.2006
had been murdered by a slave in revenge for some punishment, mounted a box
in the street, and exhorted the people to do speedy justice upon the murderer,
and closed by saying, "All that feel as I do, will follow me." Eight hundred or a
thousand followed him. They went to the jail, took out the prisoner, and in the
jail-yard itself, drove down a stake, to which they chained him hand and feet.
Fine split wood was piled around him, and he was miserably burned to death.
"He gave," says a correspondent of the Maysville (Ky.) Eagle, "some of the
most hideous screams I ever heard come from any human being."------
The Vicksburg Sun of Saturday, March 31, 1860, says that a negro man
belonging to Mr. Woodfolk, on Deer Creek, was recently burned at the stake for
the murder of a negro woman. All the negroes on that and the adjoining
plantations witnessed the burning. "His fate was decreed by a council of highly
respectable gentlemen."
Page 58
In 1856, Dr. Parsons, of Boston, a gentleman of unquestionable character,
published a little work of travels at the South. He copies from the Sumter (Ala.)
Whigan account of a recent burning of a slave in that county. "Dave," the slave,
belonged to James D. Thornton, was accused of having murdered a daughter of
his mistress, and, after his arrest, confessed his guilt. Thornton and his friends
took him from the jail by a stratagem, and bore him off in triumph. "They left in
high glee," says the Whig, and carried their prisoner to the appointed place of
sacrifice. Here he was "tied to a stake, with fat light wood piled around him, and
the torch was applied in the presence of two thousand persons, who had met
there to witness the novel scene." There were, it seems, some rumors afloat, that
"Dave" was tortured, but these, the Whig declares, were "entirely untrue." So,
burning men alive is not torture in Alabama. An inquiring mind, which is not
sensitive, might seek to know what is.------
Dr. Parsons gives another instance which occurred not long before his visit in
Georgia, the particulars of which he received from eye-witnesses. A slave had
received from his mistress some punishment of great severity, when he seized a
hatchet, and, as he supposed, killed her, though she afterward recovered. On
committing the deed, he ran at once to the court-house and surrendered himself
to justice. Justice in civilized countries would have been hanging. In Georgia, it
was this: The slave was given to the mob, who first gave him fifty lashes a day
for five days to prepare him for what was to follow. On the following Sunday,
he was taken from the jail, and suspended, naked, by his two hands, from the