egories. It would be interesting to know how
the slaves who stole horses expected to keep them undiscovered, but this
the vouchers fail to tell.

[Footnote 8: The MS. vouchers are among the archives in the Virginia State
Library. They have been statistically analyzed by the present writer,
substantially as here follows, in the _American Historical Review_, XX,
336-340.]

For murder there were 346, discriminated as having been committed upon the
master 56, the mistress 11, the overseer 11; upon other white persons 120;
upon free negroes 7; upon slaves 85, including 12 children all of whom were
killed by their own mothers; and upon persons not described 60. Of the
murderers 307 were men and 39 women. For poisoning and attempts to poison,
including the administering of ground glass, 40 men and 16 women were
convicted, and there were also convictions of one man and one woman for
administering medicine to white persons. For miscellaneous assault there
were 111 sentences recorded, all but eight of which were laid upon male
offenders and only two of which were described as having been directed
against colored victims.

For rape there were 73 convictions, and for attempts at rape 32. This total
of 105 cases was quite evenly distributed in the tale of years; but the
territorial distribution was notably less in the long settled Tidewater
district than in the newer Piedmont and Shenandoah. The trend of slave
crime of most other sorts, however, ran squarely counter to this; and
its notably heavier prevalence in the lowlands gives countenance to the
contemporary Southern belief that the presence of numerous free negroes
among them increased the criminal proclivities of the slaves. In at least
two cases the victims of rape were white children; and in two others, if
one be included in which the conviction was strangely of mere "suspicion
of rape," they were free mulatto women. That no slave women were mentioned
among the victims is of course far from proving that these were never
violated, for such offenses appear to have been left largely to the private
cognizance of the masters.[9] A Delaware instance of the sort attained
record through an offer of reward for the capture of a slave who had run
away after being punished.

[Footnote 9: Elkton (Md.) _Press_, July 19, 1828, advertisement, reprinted
in _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 122.]

For insurrection or conspiracy 91 slaves were convicted, 36 of them in
Henrico County in 1800