o be hanged for the beating of his slave to death, the
_Virginia Gazette_ said: "This man has justly incurred the penalties of
the law and we hear will certainly suffer, which ought to be a warning to
others to treat their slaves with more moderation."[32] In the nineteenth
century the laws generally held the maiming or murder of slaves to be
felonies in the same degree and with the same penalties as in cases where
the victims were whites; and when the statutes were silent in the premises
the courts felt themselves free to remedy the defect.[33]

[Footnote 30: Martin, _Louisiana Reports_, XV, 142.]

[Footnote 31: H.M. Henry, _Police Control of the Slave in South Carolina_,
pp. 69-79.]

[Footnote 32: _Virginia Gazette_, Apr. 21, 1775, reprinted in the _William
and Mary College Quarterly_, VIII, 36.]

[Footnote 33: The State _vs_. Jones, in Walker, _Mississippi Reports_, p.
83, reprinted in J.D. Wheeler, _The Law of Slavery_, pp. 252-254.]

Despite the ferocity of the statutes and the courts, the fewness and the
laxity of officials was such that from time to time other agencies were
called into play. For example the maraudings of runaway slaves camped in
Belle Isle swamp, a score of miles above Savannah, became so serious and
lasting that their haven had to be several times destroyed by the Georgia
militia. On one of these occasions, in 1786, a small force first employed
was obliged to withdraw in the face of the blacks, and reinforcements
merely succeeded in burning the huts and towing off the canoes, while the
negroes themselves were safely in hiding. Not long afterward, however,
the gang was broken up, partly through the services of Creek and Catawba
Indians who hunted the maroons for the prices on their heads.[34] The
Seminoles, on the other hand, gave asylum to such numbers of runaways as to
prompt invasions of their country by the United States army both before
and after the Florida purchase.[35] On lesser occasions raids were made by
citizen volunteers. The swamps of the lower Santee River, for example, were
searched by several squads in 1819, with the killing of two negroes, the
capture of several others and the wounding of one of the whites as the
result.[36]

[Footnote 34: _Georgia Colonial Records_, XII, 325, 326; _Georgia Gazette_
(Savannah), Oct. 19, 1786; _Massachusetts Sentinel_ (Boston), June 13,
1787; _Georgia State Gazette and Independent Register_ (Augusta), June 16,
1787.]

[Footnote 35: Joshua