on
and Frontier_, II, 123-125.]

A few negro felonies, indeed, resulted directly from the pressure of slave
circumstance. A gruesome instance occurred in 1864 in the same county as
the foregoing. A young slave woman, Becky by name, had given pregnancy
as the reason for a continued slackness in her work. Her master became
skeptical and gave notice that she was to be examined and might expect the
whip in case her excuse were not substantiated. Two days afterward a negro
midwife announced that Becky's baby had been born; but at the same time
a neighboring planter began search for a child nine months old which was
missing from his quarter. This child was found in Becky's cabin, with its
two teeth pulled and the tip of its navel cut off. It died; and Becky,
charged with murder but convicted only of manslaughter, was sentenced to
receive two hundred lashes in instalments of twenty-five at intervals of
four days.[3] Some other deeds done by slaves were crimes only because the
law declared them to be such when committed by persons of that class. The
striking of white persons and the administering of medicine to them are
examples. But in general the felonies for which they were convicted were of
sorts which the law described as criminal regardless of the status of the
perpetrators.

[Footnote 3: _Confederate Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), Mch. 1, 1864.]

In a West Indian colony and in a Northern state glimpses of the volume of
criminality, though not of its quality, may be drawn from the fact that
in the years from 1792 to 1802 the Jamaican government deported 271 slave
convicts at a cost of L15,538 for the compensation of their masters,[4] and
that in 1816 some forty such were deported from New York to New Orleans,
much to the disquiet of the Louisiana authorities.[5] As for the South,
state-wide statistical views with any approach to adequacy are available
for two commonwealths only. That of Louisiana is due to the fact that the
laws and courts there gave sentences of imprisonment with considerable
impartiality to malefactors of both races and conditions. In its
penitentiary report at the end of 1860, for example, the list of inmates
comprised 96 slaves along with 236 whites and 11 free colored. All the
slaves but fourteen were males, and all but thirteen were serving life
terms.[6] Classed by crimes, 12 of them had been sentenced for arson, 3
for burglary or housebreaking, 28 for murder, 4 for manslaughter, 4 for
poisoning, 5