And now we ask, what notice did the chief magistrate of Mississippi, sworn to support her Constitution, sworn to execute her laws—what notice, we ask, did he take of these horrible massacres? Why, at the next session of the Legislature, Governor Lynch, addressing them in reference to abolition, remarked, "Mississippi has given a practical demonstration of feeling on this exciting subject, that may serve as an impressive admonition to offenders; and however we may regret the occasion, we are constrained to admit, that necessity will sometimes prompt a summary mode of trial and punishment unknown to the law."
The iniquity and utter falsehood of this declaration, as applied to the transactions alluded to, are palpable. If the victims were innocent, no necessity required their murder. If guilty, no necessity required their execution contrary to law. There was no difficulty in securing their persons, and bringing them to trial.
In 1841, an unsuccessful attempt was made in Kentucky to murder a man. The assailants were arrested and lodged in jail for trial. Their fate is thus related in a letter by an eye-witness, published in the Cincinnati Gazette:—
"Williamstown, Ky., July 11, 1841.
"The unfortunate men, Lyman Couch and Smith Maythe, were taken out of jail on Saturday about 12 o'clock, and taken to the ground where they committed the horrid deed on Utterback, and at 4 o'clock were hung on the tree where Utterback lay when his throat was cut. The jail was opened by force. I suppose there were from four to seven hundred people engaged in it. Resistance was all in vain. There were three speeches made to the mob, but all in vain. They allowed the prisoners the privilege of clergy for about five hours, and then observed that they had made their peace with God, and they deserved to die. The mob was conducted with coolness and order, more so than I ever heard of on such occasions. But such a day was never witnessed in our little village, and I hope never will be again."
The fact that this atrocity was perpetrated in "our little village," and by a rural population, affords an emphatic and horrible indication of the state of morals in one of the oldest and best of our slave States.
Would that we could here close these fearful narratives; but another and more recent instance of that ferocious lawlessness which slavery has engendered, must still be added. The following facts are gathered from the Norfolk (Va.) Beacon of 19th Nov., 1842.
George W. Lore was, in April, 1842, convicted in Alabama, on circumstantial evidence, of the crime of murder. The Supreme Court granted a new trial, remarking, as is stated in another paper, that the testimony on which he was convicted was "unfit to be received by any court of justice recognized among civilized nations." In the mean time, Lore escaped from jail, and was afterwards arrested. He was seized by a mob, who put it to vote, whether he should be surrendered to the civil authority or be hung. Of 132 votes, 130 were for immediate death, and he was accordingly hung at Spring Hill, Bourbon County, on the 4th November.
And now, fellow-citizens, what think you of Mr. Calhoun's "most safe and stable basis for free institutions?" Do you number trial by jury among free institutions? You see on what basis it rests—the will of the slaveholders. You see by what tenure you and your children hold your lives. In New York, you are told by high Southern authority, "you may find loafer, and loco-foco, and agrarian, and the most corrupt and depraved of rabbles." But we ask you, where would your life be most secure if charged with crime, amid the rabble of New York or that of Clinton, Vicksburg, and Williamstown? We think we have fully proved our assertion respecting the disregard of human life felt by the slaveholding community; and of course their contempt for those legal barriers which are erected for its protection. Let us now inquire more particularly how far slavery is indeed a stable basis, on which free institutions may securely rest.