See also this remarkable admission:—“Truth had been distorted in this case, and murder manufactured out of what was nothing more than ORDINARY DOMESTIC DISCIPLINE.” If the reader refers to the testimony, he will find it testified that the woman appeared to be about sixty years old; that she was much emaciated; that there had been a succession of blows on the top of her head, and one violent one over the ear; and that, in the opinion of a surgeon, these blows were sufficient to cause death. Yet the lawyer for the defence coolly remarks that “murder had been manufactured out of what was ordinary domestic discipline.” Are we to understand that beating feeble old women on the head, in this manner, is a specimen of ordinary domestic discipline in Charleston? What would have been said if any anti-slavery newspaper at the North had made such an assertion as this? Yet the Charleston Courier reports this statement without comment or denial. But let us hear the lady’s lawyer go still further in vindication of this ordinary domestic discipline: “Chastisement must be inflicted until subordination is produced; and the extent of the punishment is not to be judged by one’s neighbors, but by himself. The event, IN THIS CASE, has been unfortunate and sad.” The lawyer admits that the result of thumping a feeble old woman on the head has, in this case, been “unfortunate and sad.” The old thing had not strength to bear it, and had no greater regard for the convenience of the family, and the reputation of “the institution,” than to die, and so get the family and the community generally into trouble. It will appear from this that in most cases where old women are thumped on the head they have stronger constitutions—or more consideration.
Again he says, “When punishment is due to the slave, the master must not be held to strict account for going an inch beyond the mark.” And finally, and most astounding of all, comes this: “He bade the jury remember the words of him who spake as never man spake,—‘Let him that hath never sinned throw the first stone.’ They, as masters, might regret excesses to which they themselves might have carried punishment.”
What sort of an insinuation is this? Did he mean to say that almost all the jurymen had probably done things of the same sort, and therefore could have nothing to say in this case? and did no member of the jury get up and resent such a charge? From all that appears, the jury acquiesced in it as quite a matter of course; and the Charleston Courier quotes it without comment, in the record of a trial which it says “will show to the world HOW the law extends the ægis of her protection alike over the white man and the humblest slave.”
Lastly, notice the decision of the judge, which has become law in South Carolina. What point does it establish? That the simple oath of the master, in face of all circumstantial evidence to the contrary, may clear him, when the murder of a slave is the question. And this trial is paraded as a triumphant specimen of legal impartiality and equity! “If the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!”
CHAPTER VIII.
THE GOOD OLD TIMES.
“A refinement in humanity of doubtful policy.”
B. F. Hunt.
The author takes no pleasure in presenting to her readers the shocking details of the following case. But it seems necessary to exhibit what were the actual workings of the ancient law of South Carolina, which has been characterized as one “conformed to the policy, and approved by the wisdom,” of the fathers of that state, and the reform of which has been called “a refinement in humanity of doubtful policy.”
It is well, also, to add the charge of Judge Wilds, partly for its intrinsic literary merit, and the nobleness of its sentiments, but principally because it exhibits such a contrast as could scarcely be found elsewhere, between the judge’s high and indignant sense of justice, and the shameful impotence and imbecility of the laws under which he acted.
The case was brought to the author’s knowledge by a letter from a gentleman of Pennsylvania, from which the following is an extract: