Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/166

 Mr. Fitzmaurice once found Rushie, the Jamaica planter before mentioned, in the act of hanging a negro. Mr. Fitzmaurice begged leave to intercede, as he was doing an action that in a few minutes he would repent of. Rushie, upon this, being a passionate man, ordered him off his estate. Mr. Fitzmaurice accordingly went, but returned early the next morning, before Rushie was up, and going into the curing-house, beheld the same negro lying dead upon a board. It was notorious that Rushie had killed many of his negroes, and destroyed them so fast that he was obliged to sell his estate. Captain Ross says also, that there was a certain planter in the same island, who had hanged a negro on a post, close to his house, and in three years destroyed forty negroes out of sixty by severity. The rest of the conduct of this planter, as described by Captain Ross, was, after a debate, canceled by the committee of the House of Commons who took the evidence, as containing circumstances too horrible to be given to the world. On Shrewsbury estate, in Jamaica, says Mr. Coor, the overseer sent for a slave, and in talking with him, he hastily struck him on the head with a small hanger, and gave him two stabs about the waist. The slave said, "Overseer, you have killed me." He pushed him out of the piazza, The slave went home and died that night. He was buried and no more said about it. A manager of an estate, says Mr. Woolrich, in Tortola, whose owner did not reside on the island, sitting at dinner, in a sudden resentment at his cook, went directly to his sword, and ran the negro woman through the body, and she died upon the floor immediately, and the negroes were called in to take her away and bury her.

Mr. Giles recollects several shocking instances of punishment. In particular on the estate where he lived, in Montserrat, the driver at day-break once informed the overseer that one of four or five negroes, chained in the dungeon, would not rise. He accompanied the overseer to the dungeon, who set the others that were in the chain to drag him out, and not rising when out, he ordered a bundle of cane-trash to be put round him and set fire to. As he still did not rise, he had a small soldering iron heated and thrust between his teeth. As the man did not yet rise, he had the chain taken off and sent him to the hospital, where he languished some days and died.

An overseer on the estate where Mr. J. Terry was, in Grenada, (Mr. Coghlan,) threw a slave into the boiling cane-juice, who died in four days. Mr. J. Terry was told of this by the owner's son, by the carpenter, and by many slaves on the estate. He has heard it often.

Mr. Woolrich says a negro ran away from a planter in Tortola, with whom he was well acquainted. The overseer having ordered to take him, dead or alive, a while after found him in one of his huts, fast asleep, in the day time, and shot him through the body. The negro jumping up, said, "What, you kill me asleep?" and dropped dead immediately. The overseer took off his head and carried it to the owner. Mr. Woolrich knew another instance in the same island. A planter, offended with his waiting man, a mulatto, stepped suddenly to his gun, on which the man ran off, but his master shot him through the head with a single ball.