le in 1849 a slave named Ben was
sentenced to death for an attempt at rape upon a white woman.[15] In
Rapides Parish, Louisiana, in 1842, a young girl was dragged into the
woods, beaten and violated. Her injuries caused her death next day. The
criminal had been caught when the report went to press.[16]

[Footnote 10: _Boston Chronicle_, Sept. 26, 1768, confirmed by a
contemporary broadside: "_The Life and Dying Speech of Arthur, a Negro Man
who was executed at Worcester, October 20, 1786, for a rape committed on
the body of one Deborah Metcalfe_" (Boston, 1768).]

[Footnote 11: Augusta _Chronicle_, Mch. 29, 1811.]

[Footnote 12: American Historical Association _Report_ for 1904, pp. 579,
580.]

[Footnote 13: Charleston _Observer_, Nov. 24, 1827.]

[Footnote 14: _Ibid_., Nov. 10, 1827.]

[Footnote 15: New Orleans _Delta_, June 23, 1849.]

[Footnote 16: New Orleans _Bee_, Sept. 27, 1842, reprinted in _Plantation
and Frontier_, II, 121, 122.]

Other examples will show that lynchings were not altogether lacking
in those days in sequel to such crimes. Near the village of Gallatin,
Mississippi, in 1843, two slave men entered a farmer's house in his absence
and after having gotten liquor from his wife by threats, "they forcibly
took from her arms the infant babe and rudely throwing it upon the floor,
they threw her down, and while one of them accomplished the fiendish design
of a ravisher the other, pointing the muzzle of a loaded gun at her head,
said he would blow out her brains if she resisted or made any noise." The
miscreants then loaded a horse with plunder from the house and made off,
but they were shortly caught by pursuing citizens and hanged. The local
editor said on his own score when recounting the episode: "We have ever
been and now are opposed to any kind of punishment being administered
under the statutes of Judge Lynch; but ... a due regard for candor and the
preservation of all that is held most sacred and all that is most dear to
man in the domestic circles of life impels us to acknowledge the fact that
if the perpetrators of this excessively revolting crime had been burned
alive, as was at first decreed, their fate would have been too good for
such diabolical and inhuman wretches."[17]

[Footnote 17: Gallatin, Miss., _Signal_, Feb. 27, 1843, reprinted in the
_Louisiana Courier_ (New Orleans), Mch. 1, 1843.]

An editorial in the _Sentinel_ of Columbus, Georgia, described and
discussed a local occur