FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105  
106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   >>   >|  
has never experienced such a distressing time as we have had since Sunday night last..... Every house, room, and corner in this place is full of women and children, driven from home, who had to take the woods until they could get to this place." "For many miles around their track," says another, "the county is deserted by women and children." Still another writes, "Jerusalem is full of women, most of them from the other side of the river,--about two hundred at Vix's." Then follow descriptions of the sufferings of these persons, many of whom had lain night after night in the woods. But the immediate danger was at an end, the short-lived insurrection was finished, and now the work of vengeance was to begin. In the frank phrase of a North Carolina correspondent,--"The massacre of the whites was over, and the white people had commenced the destruction of the negroes, which was continued after our men got there, from time to time, as they could fall in with them, all day yesterday." A postscript adds, that "passengers by the Fayetteville stage say, that, by the latest accounts, one hundred and twenty negroes had been killed,"--this being little more than one day's work. These murders were defended as Nat Turner defended his: a fearful blow must be struck. In shuddering at the horrors of the insurrection, we have forgotten the far greater horrors of its suppression. The newspapers of the day contain many indignant protests against the cruelties which took place. "It is with pain," says a correspondent of the "National Intelligencer," September 7, 1831, "that we speak of another feature of the Southampton Rebellion; for we have been most unwilling to have our sympathies for the sufferers diminished or affected by their misconduct. We allude to the slaughter of many blacks without trial and under circumstances of great barbarity..... We met with an individual of intelligence who told us that he himself had killed between ten and fifteen..... We [the Richmond troop] witnessed with surprise the sanguinary temper of the population, who evinced a strong disposition to inflict immediate death on every prisoner." There is a remarkable official document from General Eppes, the officer in command, to be found in the "Richmond Enquirer" for September 6, 1831. It is an indignant denunciation of precisely these outrages; and though he refuses to give details, he supplies their place by epithets: "revolting,"--"inhuman and not to be j
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105  
106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
horrors
 

September

 

hundred

 
Richmond
 

negroes

 
indignant
 

defended

 

children

 

killed

 

insurrection


correspondent

 
blacks
 

affected

 

allude

 

slaughter

 

misconduct

 

Intelligencer

 

protests

 

cruelties

 
newspapers

suppression

 

forgotten

 
greater
 

Rebellion

 

unwilling

 

sympathies

 

sufferers

 
Southampton
 

feature

 
National

diminished

 

witnessed

 

command

 

Enquirer

 
denunciation
 

officer

 

remarkable

 
official
 

document

 

General


precisely

 
outrages
 

revolting

 

inhuman

 

epithets

 

supplies

 

refuses

 

details

 

prisoner

 

fifteen