Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  set aside; and that if no further evidence was to be adduced on the trial of

  Stephen, the attorney for the commonwealth would exercise a proper discretion in

  entering a nolle prosequi as to him, and the Court would approve of its being

  done. A nolle prosequi was entered accordingly, and both gentlemen discharged.

  “It may be added that two days were consumed in exhibiting the evidence,

  and that the trial was by a jury of Clarke County. Both the parties had been on

  bail from the time of their arrest, and were continued on bail whilst the trial was

  depending.'

  Let us admit that the evidence does not prove the legal crime of homicide:

  what candid man can doubt, after reading this ex parte version of it, that the

  slave died in consequence of the punishment inflicted upon him?

  In criminal prosecutions the federal constitution guarantees to the accused the

  right to a public trial by an impartial jury; the right to be informed of the nature

  and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to

  have compulsory process for obtaining witness in his favour; and to have the

  assistance of counsel; guarantees necessary to secure innocence against hasty or

  vindictive judgment--absolutely necessary to prevent injustice. Grant that they

  were not intended for slaves; every master of a slave must feel that they are still

  morally binding upon him. He is the sole judge; he alone determines the offence,

  the proof requisite to establish it, and the amount of the punishment. The slave,

  then, has a peculiar claim upon him for justice. When charged with a crime,

  common humanity requires that he should be informed of it--that he should be

  confronted with the witnesses against him--that he should be permitted to show

  evidence in favour of his innocence.

  But how was poor Lewis treated? The son of Castleman said he had discovered

  who stole the money; and it was forthwith “determined that the offenders should

  be punished at once, and before they should know of the discovery that had been

  made.” Punished without a hearing! Punished on the testimony of a house-

  servant, the nature of which does not appear to have been inquired into by the

  Court! Not a word is said which authorises the belief that any careful examina-

  tion was made as it respects their guilt. Lewis and Reuben were assumed, on

  loose evidence, without deliberate investigation, to be guilty; and then, without

  allowing them to attempt to show their evidence, they were whipped until a con-

  fession of guilt was extorted by bodily pain.

  Is this Virginia justice?

  Lewis was punished with “a broad leathern strap;” he was “punished severely:”

  this we do not need to be told. A “broad leathern strap” is well adapted to

  severity of punishment. “Nor was it pretended,” the account says, “in any quarter

  that this punishment implicated either his life or his health.” This is false; it

  was expressly stated in the newspaper accounts at the time, and such was the

  general impression in the neighbourhood, that the punishment did very severely

  implicate his life. But more of this anon.

  Lewis was left. A chain was fastened around his neck, so as not to choke him,

  and secured to the joist above, leaving a slack of about a foot and a half. Remain-

  ing in an upright position, he was secure against strangulation, but he could neither

  sit nor kneel; and should he faint he would be choked to death. The account

  says that they fastened him thus for the purpose of securing him. If this had

  been the sole object, it could have been accomplished by safer and less cruel

  methods, as every reader must know. This mode of securing him was intended pro-

  bably to intimidate him, and, at the same time, afforded some gratification to the

  vindictive feeling which controlled the actors in this foul transaction. The man

  whom they left to watch Lewis said that, after remaining there about half an hour,

  he went home; and Lewis was then alive. The Castlemans say that, after punish-

  ing Reuben, they returned, having been absent not more than half an hour, and

  they found him hanging by the neck, dead. We direct attention to this part of

  the testimony to show how loose the statements were which went to make up the

  evidence.

  Why was Lewis chained at all, and a man left to watch him? “To secure him,”

  say the Castlemans. Is it customary to chain slaves in this manner, and set a

  watch over them, after severe punishment, to prevent their running away If the

  punishment of Lewis had not been unusual, and if he had not been threatened

  with another infliction on their return, there would have been no necessity for

  chaining him.

  The testimony of the man left to watch represents him as desperate, apparently

  with pain and fright. “Lewis asked for a box to stand on.” Why? Was he

  not suffering from pain and exhaustion, and did he not wish to rest himself with-

  out danger of slow strangulation? Again: he asked for “something he could jump

  off from.” “After the Castlemans left, he expressed a fear when they came back

  that he would be whipped again; and said, if he had a knife, and could get one

  hand loose, he would cut his throat.”

  The punishment that could drive him to such desperation must have been

  horrible.

  How long they were absent we know not, for the testimony on this point is

  contradictory. They found him hanging by the neck, dead, “his feet thrown behind

  him, his knees a few inches from the floor, and his head thrown forward;” just

  the position he would naturally fall into had he sunk from exhaustion. They wish

  it to appear that he hung himself. Could this be proved (we need hardly say that

  it is not) it would relieve but slightly the dark picture of their guilt. The pro-

  bability is that he sank, exhausted by suffering, fatigue, and fear. As to the

  testimony of “surgeons,” founded upon a post-mortem examination of the brain

  and blood-vessels, “that the subject could not have fainted before strangulation,”

  it is not worthy of consideration. We know something of the fallacies and fool

  eries of such examinations.

  From all we can learn; the only evidence relied on by the prosecution was that

  white man employed by the Castlemans. He was dependent upon them for work.

  Other evidence might have been obtained; why it was not is for the prosecuting

  attorney to explain. To prove what we say, and to show that justice has not

  been done in this horrible affair, we publish the following communication from

  an old and highly-respectable citizen of this place, and who is very far from being

  an Abolitionist. The slaveholders whom he mentions are well known here, and

  would have promptly appeared in the case had the prosecution, which was aware

  of their readiness, summoned them.

  “I see that Castleman, who lately had a trial for whipping a slave to death, in

  Virginia, was `triumphantly acquitted'--as many expected. There are three

  persons in this city, with whom I am acquainted, who stayed at Castleman's the

  same night in which this awful tragedy was enacted. They heard the dreadful

  lashing and the heart-rending screams and entreaties of the sufferer. They im-

  plored th
e only white man they could find on the premises, not engaged in the

  bloody work, to interpose; but for a long time he refused, on the ground that he

  was a dependant, and was afraid to give offence; and that, moreover, they had

  been drinking, and he was in fear for his own life, should he say a word that

  would be displeasing to them. He did, however, venture, and returned and re-

  ported the cruel manner in which the slaves were chained, and lashed, and se-

  cured in a blacksmith's vice. In the morning, when they ascertained that one of

  the slaves was dead, they were so shocked and indignant that they refused to eat

  in the house, and reproached Castleman with his cruelty. He expressed his

  regret that the slave had died, and especially as he had ascertained that he was

  innocent of the accusation for which he had suffered. The idea was that he had

  fainted from exhaustion; and, the chain being round his neck, he was strangled.

  The persons I refer to are themselves slaveholders--but their feelings were so

  harrowed and lacerated that they could not sleep (two of them are ladies); and

  for many nights afterwards their rest was disturbed, and their dreams made fright-

  ful, by the appalling recollection.

  “These persons would have been material witnesses, and would have willingly

  attended on the part of the prosecution. The knowledge they had of the case was

  communicated to the proper authorities, yet their attendance was not required.

  The only witness was that dependant who considered his own life in danger.

  “Yours, &c., “J. F.”

  The account, as published by the friends of the accused parties, shows a case of

  extreme cruelty. The statements made by our correspondent prove that the truth

  has not been fully revealed, and that justice has been baffled. The result of the

  trial shows how irresponsible is the power of a master over his slave; and that,

  whatever security the latter has, is to be sought in the humanity of the former,

  not in the guarantees of law. Against the cruelty of an inhuman master he has

  really no safeguard.

  Our conduct in relation to this case, deferring all notice of it in our columns till

  a legal investigation could be had, shows that we are not disposed to be captious

  towards our slaveholding countrymen. In no unkind spirit have we examined

  this lamentable case; but we must expose the utter repugnance of the slave system

  to the proper administration of justice. The newspapers of Virginia generally

  publish the account from the “Spirit of Jefferson,” without comment. They are

  evidently not satisfied that justice was done; they, doubtless, will deny that the

  accused were guilty of homicide, legally; but they will not deny that they were

  guilty of an atrocity which should brand them for ever in a Christian country.

  CHAPTER X.

  PRINCIPLES ESTABLISHED--STATE v. LEGREE; A CASE NOT

  IN THE BOOKS.

  From a review of all the legal cases which have hitherto

  been presented, and of the principles established in the judicial

  decisions upon them, the following facts must be apparent to

  the reader:--

  First. That masters do, now and then, kill slaves by the

  torture.

  Second. That the fact of so killing a slave is not of itself

  held presumption of murder in slave jurisprudence.

  Third. That the slave in the act of resistance to his master may

  always be killed.

  From these things it will be seen to follow that, if the facts

  of the death of Tom had been fully proved by two white wit-

  nesses in open court, Legree could not have been held by any

  consistent interpreter of slave-law to be a murderer, for Tom

  was in the act of resistance to the will of his master. His

  master had laid a command on him in the presence of other

  slaves. Tom had deliberately refused to obey the command.

  The master commenced chastisement, to reduce him to obedience.

  And it is evident, at the first glance, to every one, that if the

  law does not sustain him in enforcing obedience in such a case,

  there is an end of the whole slave power. No Southern Court

  would dare to decide that Legree did wrong to continue the

  punishment as long as Tom continued the insubordination.

  Legree stood by him every moment of the time, pressing him to

  yield, and offering to let him go as soon as he did yield. Tom's

  resistance was insurrection. It was an example which could not

  be allowed for a moment on any Southern plantation. By the

  express words of the constitution of Georgia, and by the under-

  standing and usage of all slave-law, the power of life and death

  is always left in the hands of the master, in exigencies like this.

  This is not a case like that of Souther v. the Commonwealth,

  The victim of Souther was not in a state of resistance or insur-

  rection. The punishment, in his case, was a simple vengeance

  for a past offence, and not an attempt to reduce him to subordi-

  nation.

  There is no principle of slave jurisprudence by which a man

  could be pronounced a murderer, for acting as Legree did, in his

  circumstances. Everybody must see that such an admission

  would strike at the foundations of the slave system. To be sure,

  Tom was in a state of insurrection for conscience' sake. But the

  law does not, and cannot, contemplate that the negro shall have

  a conscience independent of his master's. To allow that the

  negro may refuse to obey his master whenever he thinks that

  obedience would be wrong, would be to produce universal anarchy.

  If Tom had been allowed to disobey his master in this case, for

  conscience' sake, the next day Sambo would have had a case of

  conscience, and Quimbo the next. Several of them might very

  justly have thought that it was a sin to work as they did. The

  mulatto woman would have remembered that the command of

  God forbade her to take another husband. Mothers might have

  considered that it was more their duty to stay at home and take

  care of their children, when they were young and feeble, than to

  work for Mr. Legree in the cotton-field. There would be no end

  to the havoc made upon cotton-growing operations, were the negro

  allowed the right of maintaining his own conscience on moral

  subjects. If the slave system is a right system, and ought to be

  maintained, Mr. Legree ought not to be blamed for his conduct

  in this case; for he did only what was absolutely essential to

  maintain the system; and Tom died in fanatical and foolhardy

  resistance to “the powers that be, which are ordained of God.”

  He followed a sentimental impulse of his desperately depraved

  heart, and neglected those “solid teachings of the written word,”

  which, as recently elucidated, have proved so refreshing to emi-

  nent political men.

  CHAPTER XI.

  THE TRIUMPH OF JUSTICE OVER LAW.

  Having been obliged to record so many trials in which justice

  has been turned away backward by the hand of law, and equity

  and common humanity have been kept out by the bolt and bar of

  logic, it is a relief to the mind to find one recent trial recorded in

  North Carolina, i
n which the nobler feelings of the human heart

  have burst over formalised limits, and where the prosecution

  appears to have been conducted by men who were not ashamed

  of possessing in their bosoms that very dangerous and most

  illogical agitator, a human heart. It is true that, in giving this

  trial, very sorrowful but inevitable inferences will force them-

  selves upon the mind, as to that state of public feeling which

  allowed such outrages to be perpetrated in open daylight, in the

  capital of North Carolina, upon a hapless woman. It would

  seem that the public were too truly instructed in the awful

  doctrine pronounced by Judge Ruffin, that “THE POWER OF

  THE MASTER MUST BE ABSOLUTE,” to think of interfering while

  the poor creature was dragged barefoot and bleeding at a horse's

  neck, at the rate of five miles an hour, through the streets of

  Raleigh. It seems, also, that the most horrible brutalities and

  enormities that could be conceived of were witnessed, without

  any efficient interference, by a number of the citizens, among

  whom we see the name of the Hon. W. H. Haywood, of Raleigh.

  It is a comfort to find the Attorney-General in this case speaking

  as a man ought to speak. Certainly there can be no occasion to

  wish to pervert or overstate the dread workings of the slave

  system, or to leave out the few comforting and encouraging

  features, however small the encouragement of them may be.

  The case is now presented, as narrated from the published

  reports by Dr. Bailey, editor of the National Era, a man whose

  candour and fairness need no indorsing, as every line that he

  writes speaks for itself.

  The reader may at first be surprised to find slave testimony

  in the Court, till he recollects that it is a slave that is on trial,

  the testimony of slaves being only null when it concerns whites,

  We find in one of the Raleigh (North Carolina) papers, of June 5, 1851, a

  report of an interesting trial, at the spring term of the Superior Court. Mima, a

  slave, was indicted for the murder of her master, William Smith, of Johnston

  County, on the night of the 29th of November, 1850. The evidence for the pro-