RECAPITULATION.
| Number of Prisoners executed | 35 |
| Number of Prisoners respited until the 25th October, 1822, with a view to the commutation of their punishment | 12 |
| Number of Prisoners sentenced to be transported by their owners under direction of the City Council | 21 |
| Number of Prisoners sentenced to be transported beyond the limits of the State | 1 |
| Number of Prisoners acquitted, propriety of transportation suggested to their owners, and those whose masters have agreed to transport without trial | 9 |
| Number of Prisoners acquitted and discharged by the Court | 27 |
| Number of Prisoners acquitted and discharged by Committee of Vigilance | 25 |
| Whole number arrested | 131 |
| Respectfully submitted by | ||
| Fred. Wesner, Tho. D. Condy, Tho. Napier, Samuel Burger, Edward P. Simons, | Com. of Vigilance | |
SENTENCE.
9th July, 1822.—Jack, a slave, belonging to Paul Pritchard, commonly called Gullah Jack, and sometimes Couter Jack, was brought up, and, sentence pronounced by L. H. KENNEDY, Presiding Magistrate.
JACK PRITCHARD—The Court, after deliberately considering all the circumstances of your case, are perfectly satisfied of your guilt. In the prosecution of your wicked designs, you were not satisfied with resorting to natural and ordinary means, but endeavored to enlist on your behalf, all the powers of darkness, and employed for that purpose, the most disgusting mummery and superstition. You represented yourself as invulnerable; that you could neither be taken nor destroyed, and that all who fought under your banners would be invincible. While such wretched expedients are calculated to inspire the confidence, or to alarm the fears of the ignorant and credulous, they excite no other emotion in the mind of the intelligent and enlightened, but contempt and disgust. Your boasted Charms have not preserved yourself, and of course could not protect others. “Your Altars and your Gods have sunk together in the dust.” The airy spectres, conjured by you, have been chased away by the superior light of Truth, and you stand exposed, the miserable and deluded victim of offended Justice. Your days are literally numbered. You will shortly be consigned to the cold and silent grave, and all the Powers of Darkness cannot rescue you from your approaching Fate! Let me then, conjure you to devote the remnant of your miserable existence in fleeing from the “wrath to come.” This can only be done by a full disclosure of the truth. The Court are willing to afford you all the aid in their power, and to permit any Minister of the Gospel, whom you may select to have free access to you. To him you may unburthen your guilty conscience. Neglect not the opportunity, for there is “no device nor art beyond the tomb,” to which you must shortly be consigned.
SENTENCE pronounced on Dick, Bacchus, William, Naphur, Adam, Bellisle, Charles, Jeremy and Dean, by L. H. Kennedy, Esq. Presiding Magistrate.
The Court, on mature deliberation, have pronounced you guilty; the punishment of that guilt is DEATH. Your conduct, on the present occasion, exhibits a degree of depravity and extravagance, rarely paralleled. Your professed objects were to trample, not only on the laws of this state, but on those of humanity; to commit murder, outrage and plunder, and to substitute for the blessings we enjoy, anarchy and confusion in their most odious forms.—The beauties of nature and of art, would have fallen victims to your relentless fury; and even the decrepitude of age and the innocence of childhood would have found no other refuge than the grave!
Surely, nothing but infatuation could have prompted you to enter into a plot so wild and diabolical. A moment’s reflection would have convinced you, that disgrace and ruin must have been its consequence, and that it would have probably resulted in the destruction and extermination of your race. But if, even complete success had crowned your efforts, what were the golden visions which you anticipated? Such men as you, are, in general, as ignorant as you are vicious, without any settled principles, and possessing but few of the virtues of civilized life;—you would soon, therefore, have degenerated into a horde of barbarians, incapable of any government. But, admitting that a different result might have taken place, it is natural to inquire, what are the miseries of which you complain? That we should all earn our bread by the sweat of our brow, is the decree which God pronounced at the fall of man. It extended alike to the master and the slave; to the cottage and the throne. Every one is more or less subject to control; and the most exalted, as well as the humblest individual, must bow with deference to the laws of that community, in which he is placed by Providence. Your situation, therefore, was neither extraordinary nor unnatural. Servitude has existed under various forms, from the Deluge to the present time, and in no age or country has the condition of slaves been milder or more humane, than your own. You are, with few exceptions, treated with kindness, and enjoy every comfort compatible with your situation. You are exempt from many of the miseries, to which the poor are subject throughout the world. In many countries the life of the slave is at the disposal of his master; here you have always been under the protection of the law.
The tribunal which now imposes this sentence, through its humble organ, affords a strong exemplification of the truth of these remarks. In the discharge of the painful duties which have devolved on them, the members of this Court have been as anxious to acquit the innocent as determined to condemn the guilty.