tnote 19: _Southern Banner_ (Athens, Ga.), June 21, 1855.]

[Footnote 20: _Caddo Gazette_, quoted in the New Orleans _Bee_, April 5,
1845.]

For another case of lynching, which occurred in White County, Tennessee, in
1858, there is available merely the court record of a suit brought by the
owners of the slave to recover pecuniary damages from those who had lynched
him. It is incidentally recited, with strong reprehension by the court,
that the negro was in legal custody under a charge of rape and murder when
certain citizens, part of whom had signed a written agreement to "stand by
each other," broke into the jail and hanged the prisoner.[21]

[Footnote 21: Head's _Tennessee Reports_, I, 336. For lynchings prompted by
other crimes than rape see below, p. 474, footnote 60.]

In general the slaveholding South learned of crimes by individual negroes
with considerable equanimity. It was the news or suspicion of concerted
action by them which alone caused widespread alarm and uneasiness. That
actual deeds of rebellion by small groups were fairly common is suggested
by the numerous slaves convicted of murdering their masters and overseers
in Virginia, as well as by chance items from other quarters. Thus in 1797
a planter in Screven County, Georgia, who had recently bought a batch of
newly imported Africans was set upon and killed by them, and his wife's
escape was made possible only by the loyalty of two other slaves.[22]
Likewise in Bullitt County, Kentucky, in 1844, when a Mr. Stewart
threatened one of his slaves, that one and two others turned upon him and
beat him to death;[23] and in Arkansas in 1845 an overseer who was attacked
under similar circumstances saved his life only with the aid of several
neighbors and through the use of powder and ball.[24] Such episodes were
likely to grow as the reports of them flew over the countryside. For
instance in 1856 when an unruly slave on a plantation shortly below New
Orleans upon being threatened with punishment seized an axe and was
thereupon shot by his overseer, the rumor of an insurrection quickly ran to
and through the city.[25]

[Footnote 22: _Columbian Museum and Savannah Advertiser_ (Savannah, Ga.),
Feb. 24, 1797.]

[Footnote 23: Paducah _Kentuckian_, quoted in the New Orleans _Bee_, Apr.
3, 1844.]

[Footnote 24: New Orleans _Bee_, Aug. 1, 1845, citing the Arkansas
_Southern Shield_.]

[Footnote 25: New Orleans _Daily Tropic_, Feb. 16, 1846.]

If all such rumor