elancholy but incontrovertible fact that in the cities of
Philadelphia, New York and Boston, where the blacks are put on an equality
with the whites, ... they are chiefly noted for their aversion to labor
and proneness to villainy. Men of this class are peculiarly dangerous in
a community like ours; they are in general remarkable for the boldness of
their manners, and some of them possess talents to execute the most wicked
and deep laid plots."

[Footnote 89: [Edwin C. Holland], _A Refutation of the Calumnies circulated
against the Southern and Western States respecting the institution and
existence of Slavery among them_. By a South Carolinian (Charleston, 1822),
pp. 84, 85.]

[Footnote 90: E.R. Turner, _The Negro in Pennsylvania_, p. 158.]

[Footnote 91: Letter to the editor in the _Louisiana Gazette_, Aug. 12,
1819.]

CHAPTER XXII

SLAVE CRIME

The negroes were in a strange land, coercively subjected to laws and
customs far different from those of their ancestral country; and by being
enslaved and set off into a separate lowly caste they were largely deprived
of that incentive to conformity which under normal conditions the hope of
individual advancement so strongly gives. It was quite to be expected that
their conduct in general would be widely different from that of the whites
who were citizens and proprietors. The natural amenability of the blacks,
however, had been a decisive factor in their initial enslavement, and the
reckoning which their captors and rulers made of this was on the whole well
founded. Their lawbreaking had few distinctive characteristics, and gave no
special concern to the public except as regards rape and revolt.

Records of offenses by slaves are scant because on the one hand they were
commonly tried by somewhat informal courts whose records are scattered and
often lost, and on the other hand they were generally given sentences
of whipping, death or deportation, which kept their names out of the
penitentiary lists. One errs, however, in assuming a dearth of serious
infractions on their part and explaining it by saying, "under a strict
slave regime there can scarcely be such a thing as crime";[1] for
investigation reveals crime in abundance. A fairly typical record in the
premises is that of Baldwin County, Georgia, in which the following trials
of slaves for felonies between 1812 and 1832 are recounted: in 1812
Major was convicted of rape and sentenced to be hanged. In 1815 Fan