Such sentiments as these, from a man professing himself a minister of "the meek and lowly Jesus," are little calculated to fascinate and render [181] any people the more inclined to a church establishment.
February 3d. What transitions of temperature!—the frost yesterday was severe; the Schuylkill and even the Delaware frozen over, and skating the order of the day; the thermometer at ten degrees below freezing:—last night a heavy mild rain has fallen, and at mid-day now the thermometer is at 40°.
HORRIBLE EXECUTION!
I shall copy the account without comment; it needs none. Perpetrated among a people who call themselves christians, and who boast of being "the most free, the most enlightened, the most humane people on earth."
"Augusta, (Georgia,) Feb. 1, A. D. 1820.
"On Friday last, two negro men, named Ephraim and Sam, were executed in conformity to their sentence, for the murder of their master, Mr. Thomas Handcock, of Edgefield district, S. C.—Sam was burnt and Ephraim hung, and his head severed from his body, and publicly exposed. The circumstances attending the crime for which these miserable beings have suffered, were of a nature so aggravated, as imperiously demanded the terrible punishment which has been inflicted upon them. [They had shot their owner while he slept.]
[182] "The burning of malefactors is a punishment only resorted to when absolute necessity demands a signal example. It must be a horrid and appaling sight to see a human being consigned to the flames—let even fancy picture the scene—the pile—the stake—the victim, and the mind sickens and sinks under the oppression of its own feelings,—what then must be the dreadful reality! From some of the spectators we learn, that it was a scene which transfixed in breathless horror almost every one who witnessed it. As the flames approached him, the piercing shriek of the unfortunate victim struck upon the heart with a fearful, painful vibration,—but when the devouring element seized upon his body all was hushed: yet the cry of agony still thrilled in the ear, and an involuntary and sympathetic shudder ran through the crowd."
In consequence of the above, the following letter was addressed to the editor of the newspaper.
"To Z. Poulson,
"A Philadelphian in thy paper says, the burning of malefactors is a punishment never before resorted to in this country,—I wish the fact were so, but in the year 1800, the following was published, viz.