[246]. Colonial Laws of New York, I, 765–766.
Compare law of Aug. 8, 1688, in the Island of Barbadoes, which provided that two justices and three freeholders were to “give sentence of Death upon” negroes, for murder, rape, burning houses, &c.—Acts of Assembly Passed in the Island of Barbadoes, From 1648, to 1718 (1721), pp. 140–141.
[247]. Laws of the State of Delaware (1797), I, 102–105.
By an act passed in January, 1797, thirty-nine lashes well laid on were added to the punishment for an attempted rape on a white woman or maid.—Laws of the State of Delaware (1797), II, 1321–1324.
[248]. Laws of Maryland (1799), Chapter XIV.
[249]. See John S. Bassett: “Slavery and Servitude in the Colony of North Carolina”—Johns Hopkins Historical Studies (1896), XIV, 199. In Virginia the punishment of castration was so frequently inflicted upon slaves by the county courts that the Assembly deemed it necessary to enact that “it shall not be lawful for any county or corporation court, to order and direct castration of any slave, except such slave shall be convicted of an attempt to ravish a white woman, in which case they may inflict such punishment.”—See Hening: “Virginia Statutes at Large,” VI, 3; VIII, 358; Samuel Sheperd: “Virginia Statutes at Large” (New Series, 1835), I, 125.
[250]. “Records of the Court of Assistants of the Colony of the Massachusetts Bay” (J. Noble, 1901), p. 74.
The following passage is taken from the Boston Chronicle, Sept. 26–Oct. 3, 1768 (No. 42, I, 383): “We hear that a negro fellow was tried at the Assizes held lately at Worcester, for a rape, and found guilty, and received sentence of death.—A white man was also tried and found guilty of the same crime, and sentenced to sit on the gallows.”
[251]. See “Proceedings of the New Jersey Historical Society” (1874), 2d Series, III, 178.
[252]. See J. R. Brackett: “The Negro in Maryland” (1889), p. 131.