Homicide
In 1827, a slave named Ambrose escaped from his owner Berryman Burger. Like most runaways, Ambrose did not make the dangerous trek north but remained in the area, a practice called ‘lying out.’ In most cases, such slaves kept a low profile, living off the land or from scraps gleaned from friends and compatriots in the quarter. Ambrose, however, took a different path, waging guerrilla war against slavery and local slaveholders. Over the course of more than a year he broke into barns, slaughtered hogs and poultry, pillaged smokehouses, burned outbuildings, destroyed cotton, and generally behaved like a local Robin Hood, stealing from the rich and returning to his fellow slaves. Within months, Ambrose had induced other runaways to join him, and he was regarded by local planters as a “desperate character ... capable of any act of villainy” who should be killed on sight.
Early in the morning of September 24, 1828, a local white man, Kirkland Harmon, surprised Ambrose in his camp and gunned him down as he rose. Ambrose winced as the buckshot “enter[ed] his back loins & hips,” and he bled out on the ground. His one-man rebellion was effectively over. Without the coroner’s inquest convened over his body, however, we would know nothing of his rebellion; the record of his death is the only record we have of his life. How many Ambroses were there? It is hard to know. To its credit, Ambrose’s band picked up his mantle and continued to operate in the area as a plague to local planters.
I was not surprised to learn that such local resistance was quashed and that slaves like Ambrose were routinely murdered. I was surprised to learn how often the coroner responded. In her WPA interview, the former slave Mittie Freeman remembered the coroner as “that fellow that comes running fast when somebody gets killed,” and the coroner is mentioned in quite a few of the most famous slave narratives, including those by Frederick Douglass and William Wells Brown. The coroner was often the only magistrate mentioned because he was the only ‘outside’ law the slaves ever saw. We will never know precisely how many enslavers murdered their slaves and effortlessly covered it up. But in cases where the murderer was someone other than the enslaver, or where the enslaver failed to cover it up, there usually was an investigation, at the very least because property had been destroyed, and someone expected compensation.
Reflecting on the South he was forced to flee because of his Unionism, John Aughey noted: “Of course the laws which exist in every state against the murder or torturing of slaves are about as well observed as might be laws enacted by wolves against sheep-murder.” But in the coroners’ inquest there was actually a subtle game of community standards going on. Standing over the body of a slave and surveying the grim damage, a coroner’s jury was often perfectly comfortable recommending that a white be indicted. And at coroner’s inquests slaves were allowed to testify. The actual jury nullification came later, in the courtroom, when the mangled body was not actually present and the murderer was let off. But by then he had been held up to public scrutiny; his judgment and decency had been questioned publicly and legally. It is less than justice, but it is not nothing, a fact which slaves themselves recognized. When the coroner came a-runnin’, many slaves thought he might bring justice with him from some far off, saner place. And in his own Narrative, Frederick Douglass tells the story of an unnamed slave girl whose mistress “pounded in her skull” with a piece of firewood because she allowed a baby to cry uncontrollably and wake the household. “I will not say that this murder most foul produced no sensation. It did produce a sensation. A warrant was issued for the arrest of Mrs. Hicks, but incredible to tell, for some reason or other, that warrant was never served, and she not only escaped condign punishment, but the pain and mortification as well of being arraigned before a court of justice.” It is hard to believe that for all he’d seen of the institution of slavery, Douglass still thought it capable of any justice at all.
What does not make it into many of the slave narratives, including Douglass’s, is the violence that existed within the slave community. Enslavement does not magically transform all who endure it into savvy, self-sustaining freedom-fighters. If we are going to grant the enslaved their full humanity we must grant that, like any other group of people, they occasionally fought, fornicated, and got into petty disputes that sometimes took a murderous turn. To be sure, as historian Steven Hahn has noted, the slave quarter produced one of the most radical and transformative politics ever seen in America, a politics that produced Nat Turner and Frederick Douglass and finally brought down a $3.5 billion dollar interest. But in coroners reports we get a glimpse of the violence that existed within the slave community that we knew had to be there. Thus did the enslaved of the Haile plantation turn their children over to Tamer, the enslaved nurse, on their way out to the fields, little knowing that she liked to punish the children by tying them too close to a fire, a practice that was only discovered when she finally cooked one of them to death. Or take the case of an enslaved man named Dick who became so jealous that he pulled a log from a fire and murdered the man who was staying in the cabin of a woman he wanted to sleep with.
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Today, the typical homicide in the United States involves one man shooting another, and this is equally true in the CSI:Dixie database. Comparatively speaking, the CSI:D sample has a higher percentage of male victims and a lower percentage of gun use. Today firearms are used in 68% of American homicides; in the CSI:D sample guns are used 52% of the time. Today 77% of homicide victims are male; in the CSI:D sample 88% are male (and virtually all of the perpetrators are men). Put bluntly, in the nineteenth century south, violent death was a more exclusively male province, and Death had more faces.
Interestingly, though, in the CSI:D database virtually none of the gun-related homicides are related to robbery. Most are the product of the highly combustible combination of anger and alcohol. The last words of J. Edward Sims were typical: “Shoot you damed cowardly son of a Bitch.” Or take this poignant exchange:
Tom Rutland (firing): “I will kill you, you son of a bitch.”
William Padgett (bleeding): “You have already.”
In the strange alchemy of the male brain, friends became mortal enemies in an instant, often over trivialities. “How in the hell did you Gap up My ax?” Gus Settler demanded to know of Allen Holmes in March 1882. I hardly know what a gapped-up axe looks like, but I do know that returning a borrowed tool in less than satisfactory condition is no grounds for murder. Settler disagreed and shot Holmes dead.
Infanticide
Life in the Faulknerian world of CSI:D was especially cheap for children. Catherine Berry, a domestic in the R. C. Poole household, was told that she would be terminated if she was indeed pregnant. In an awful feat of endurance, she continued with her chores until, doubled over with pain, she snuck away to give birth in the potato shed. Reeling from the loss of blood, she still managed to strangle the baby and fling it into the Pacolet River, where it washed up at the feet of some fishermen. When Peggy Bedenbaugh felt her first contractions, she went out to a corner of the yard, gave birth in a hole, and covered the baby over with dirt. Luly Collins threw her baby down a well. Nancy Owens swept hers under a brush pile. All had denied for months that they were in the “family way”; all had killed the evidence; all were indicted for murder.
Or take the case of Jane Arnold. On September 7, 1857, Brazeal Cox and his wife found sixteen-year-old Jane Arnold stretched out on the ground with a baby beside her, bleeding from its umbilical cord. When Arnold became aware of the couple she called out to Mrs. Cox, who wrapped the dying infant in Arnold’s apron and took it into the Arnold home. Mrs. Cox then returned and asked the girl why she hadn’t given birth indoors. Because her daddy was “doging” her, she said, and had cast her from the house. “She seemed to be grieving,” Cox told the coroner in a model of understatement, “but [I] don’t know what for, whether on the part of her dead child or the abuse of her father.”
Three years later, at four in the morning, a shivering Jane Arnold knocked at the door of a neighboring farm. She was cold and unkempt, but she couldn’t make up her mind to stay. Instead she returned to the abandoned schoolhouse where she had taken her latest baby, born in the middle of the road, to die of exposure.
The coroners’ office reveals a world where men force women into sex and women pay the price for it, in embarrassing pregnancies, social stigma, and the occasionally desperate attempt to cover up the evidence. In 1829 a fire in Thomas Welsh’s smoke-house revealed a small cubby in which a full term child had been secreted in a jar of lime. It is impossible to know whether this was an infanticide or a child who had been stillborn. Regardless the mother was covering up something. Occasionally that something was an interracial liaison. More often it was simply a pregnancy out-of-wedlock. Many of the cases reveal that the women had been trying for some time to induce an abortion. ‘Home remedies’ for pregnancy mentioned in the CSI:D sample include savin powder mixed with turpentine, red bark bay tea, and the ashes of dried corn cobs. In this sense some of the infanticides might be considered extremely late-term abortions. One unnamed mother, for instance, gave birth to a stillborn child who bore unmistakable marks of abuse en utero. M. Lipscomb was found doubled over a fence having apparently bled out in a botched, self-induced abortion.
Almost sadder is the number of women who were held to account for the ‘murder’ of infants who had most likely died of crib death or SIDS. Often sent back to the cotton field within days of giving birth, enslaved mothers were understandably exhausted, and they often slept with their infants so they could breast feed in a haze and go back to sleep. When they occasionally awoke to dead babies, they were unfortunately as susceptible as their doctors and enslavers to believe that they had smothered their children in their sleep, a phenomenon which only enhanced their reputation as uncaring and unnatural mothers.
NEXT: Suicide
Murder Cases Tried in South Carolina, 1887-1900
Year | Number of Homicides Tried | Not Guilty Verdicts | Guilty Verdicts | Cases Dismissed or Continued | Percentage Found Guilty |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1887 | 79 | 54 | 11 | 14 | 13.9% |
1888 | 117 | 61 | 36 | 20 | 30.1% |
1889 | 120 | 69 | 30 | 21 | 25.0% |
1890 | incomplete returns | - | - | - | - |
1891 | 151 | 76 | 46 | 29 | 30.0% |
1892 | incomplete returns | - | - | - | - |
1893 | incomplete returns | - | - | - | - |
1894 | incomplete returns | - | - | - | - |
1895 | 210 | 112 | 67 | 31 | 31.9% |
1896 | 201 | 110 | 67 | 24 | 33.3% |
1897 | 215 | 120 | 64 | 31 | 29.7% |
1898 | 248 | 105 | 96 | 47 | 44.0% |
1899 | 205 | 83 | 97 | 35 | 47.3% |
1900 | 224 | 127 | 71 | 26 | 31.7% |
Credit: John Hammond Moore, Carnival of Blood: Dueling, Lynching, and Murder in South Carolina, 1880-1920 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2006), pp. 130-131, taken from Reports and Resolutions of the General Assembly of the State of South Carolina
Homicide Inquests
Name![]() |
Deceased Description | Date | Inquest Location | Death Method | Inquest Finding |
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Eugene McCarty | May 11, 1861 | at Edgefield Court house, Edgefield County, SC | pistol |
upon there oaths do say that the said Eugene McCarty the deceased came to his death this day by a wound received from a pistol in the hands of William A Murrell |
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Eunice Hogan | October 26, 1851 | at the house of John Briskey, Edgefield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that the said Eunice Hogan was killed and murdered by some person or persons . . .unknown |
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Evans Gulledge | November 23, 1940 | at Chesterfield, Chesterfield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that Evans Gulledge received in Chesterfield County a mortal wound by Pistol Shot Wounds in the hands of Silas Johnson |
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Fanny | slave | November 4, 1855 | at the plantation of Edward A. Salmond about four miles from Camden, Kershaw County, SC |
do say that that the Negro woman came to her death by a fit of apoplexy on the morning of the fourth day of November 1855 in her own house. |
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Farquer Ratliff | August 11, 1941 | at Chesterfield, Chesterfield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that Farquer Ratliff & Bertha Evans received in Chesterfield County a mortal wound by Gun shot wounds in the hands of James Evans |
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female child, white child | female child, white child | January 21, 1881 | at Greenville, Greenville County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that. . . the said unknown female child came to her death from violence at the hands of a party or parties to the Jury unknown |
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female daughter of | female daughter of | November 28, 1841 | at graveyard at Hammonds Old Field, Anderson County, SC |
do say on oaths from the evidence before us and examination of the body that it came to its death by the improper interference of the mother Rebecca Mullinax cutting the string of the naval omiting to cord the same |
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Flora Harrison | November 4, 1890 | at Liberty Hill, Edgefield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that Sam Moss the Said Flora Harrison by Misfortune and contrary to his Will in manner and form aforesaid did Kill and Slay |
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Ford Rayfield | August 17, 1935 | at Patrick, Chesterfield County, SC | truck |
upon there oaths do say that Ford Rayfield received in Chesterfield County a mortal wound by Lick from Right rear wheel of Truck in the hands of Cleo Perdue While intoxicated and driving Recklessly |
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Francis Stuart | May 8, 1883 | in a house occupied by Henry Langford on the plantation of W.S. Pitts, Laurens County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that on the night of 7th of May 1883 about half past 8 O'clock the said Francis Stuart came to her death from the effects of a gun shot wound supposed to have been inflicted by Lewis Stuart, her husband, and so the jurors aforesaid, do say that the aforesaid Lewis Stuart, in manner and form aforesaid, Francis Stewart, then and there feloniously did kill against the peace and dignity of the said State aforesaid. |
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Frank | slave | July 16, 1840 | at the house of Charles M. Breaker, Kershaw County, SC |
upon their oaths do say we suppose he came to his death by the evidence before us by being stabbed in the thigh with a deadly weapon and that done by the hands of a negro man slave by the name of Titus the property of Samuel A.B. Shannon in or near the main road leading from Camden to Salisbury |
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Frank Burnett | colored | September 15, 1869 | at Spartanburg Court House, Spartanburg County, SC | pistol |
upon their oaths do say that Frank Burnett colored was killed at Spartanburg Courhouse in the rear of Thomson's blacksmith shop. . .by a pistol or gun shot wound in the heart given by the hand or hands of Henry Jones colored and Moses Young colored |
Frank Dillard | September 24, 1890 | on the plantation of William Patterson, Laurens County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that the said Frank Dillard came to his death by "a gun shot wound in the hands of W.B. Patterson |
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Frank Flowers | January 31, 1921 | [no location given], Chesterfield County, SC |
We the Jury . . . find that the Said Frank Flowers came to his death by gun Shot in the had of Dan Bittle |
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Frank Holson | freedman | January 9, 1867 | at Lee Holson, Edgefield County, SC | pistol |
upon there oaths do say that. . .said Frank Holson freedman came to his death. . .by a Pistol shot in the hands of William W Hammond |
Freedwoman | Freedwoman | October 23, 1867 | at Anderson Court House, Anderson County, SC |
do say that the said infant came to its death by strangulation by the hands of its mother Clary Williams, a freed woman in the town of Anderson . . .immediately after its birth |
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G. B. Kelly | December 16, 1896 | at Chesterfield Court House, Chesterfield County, SC |
upon their oaths, do say: That the said G.B. Kelly came to his death from a gun shot wound on the 12th day of Dec. 1896 in the hands of W.P. Swinnie and died on the 14th of Dec from the effects |
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Gabavila Steadman | May 15, 1889 | at Joseph Stedman's, Spartanburg County, SC |
upon there oaths do say that the said Gabriella Stedman came to her death by blows inflicted on the head by person or persons unknown to the jury |
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Gabriel Rabon | October 9, 1862 | at Turf Camp Bay, Horry County, SC |
upon their oaths do Say he came to death by wounds inflicted by shot penetrating the heart by some means to the Jurors unknown . . . But according to evidence we believe that Johnathan J Carroll did kill the said Gabrell Rabon |
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George | freedmen | October 25, 1865 | at John H. Campbell's, Greenville County, SC |
upon their oaths do say . . . that the said George was willfully homicideed . . .received a bullet wound near the reg of the heart and lodged 2 1/2 inchs below the right nipple also a bullet wound in the left shoulder lodging in the body |
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George | slave | September 1, 1841 | at the plantation of Wm. K. Clowney, Union County, SC | shotgun |
upon their oaths do say . . .the above named slave was Shot with a Shot gun in the plantation of Wm. K. Clowney by Charles Ming the overseer of the above name plantation |
George | slave | July 19, 1855 | near Pine Tree Creek, Kershaw County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that the said negro child George, from the evidence adduced before the Jury came to his death by the hands of one Jackson Bradley aided and abetted by one William Adkins on the Saturday night before the said Jackson Bradley was committed to Jail |
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George Blakeney | February 12, 1896 | at Chesterfield Court House, Chesterfield County, SC | rocks |
upon their oaths, do say: That the said Geo. Blakney came to his death from the rupture of a blood vessel in the abdoman caused by some over exertion in attempting to escape from the chain gang on the 16th of Feb 1896 |
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George Fowler | November 4, 1885 | at Mrs S E Dunlop plantation, Laurens County, SC |
upon their oaths do say. That the said George Fowler came to his death on Mrs S E Dunlops place in Laurens County at about 7 oclock PM the 6th day of November AD 1885 by a pistol shot in the hands of Ira Hughes. |
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George Franklin | of color | December 4, 1866 | at Hush[?] Creek, Greenville County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that. . . he came to his death by means of a gun shot which entered about five inches below the right nipple & passed out just above the left [?] bone at Thor[?] Callaway's still house |
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George Grice | May 6, 1877 | at Doby's Mill, Kershaw County, SC | knife |
upon their oaths do say that George Grice came to his death by a stab wound in the left breast by a knife in the hands of George Philips[?] |
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George Huggins | November 30, 1814 | at John Pitts, Laurens County, SC | axe |
upon their oaths do say. That the deceased George Huggins came to his Death By a Blow struck by Jay Pitts with an axe |
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George Prisock | June 11, 1840 | at E. P. Porters, Union County, SC | hoe |
upon their oaths do say that the said George Prisock, was Struck one violent blow with a weading[?] hoe on the head which broke his skill, the above blow was Struck by a negro man Slave name James, the property of E. P. Porter |
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George Pye | December 13, 1857 | Spartanburg County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that they think he came to his death by wounds inflicted on his person; from the evidence we believe that Gilbert Fleming did feloniously kill the said George Pye against the peace and dignity of the state |
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George Ross | June 29, 1898 | at Adoms[?] place, Edgefield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say, that George Ross, came to his death by a pistol shot wilfully in the hands of Ed Hood |
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George Sullivan | June 26, 1893 | at Prospect church, Laurens County, SC |
upon their oaths do say, That his death was caused by a pistol shot, fired from an American double action, .38 cal, five shot pistol, By Edgar Sullivan, on the 25 day of June, about one oc in the evening, at Prospect church in Laurens Co SC. |
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George W. Barker | December 27, 1854 | at Winnsboro, Fairfield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say That the deceased came to his death by pistol shots, received in an affray between the deceased and Richard N. McMaster, from a pistol fired in the hands of Richard N. McMaster on the night of the 26th. |
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George Watkins | October 10, 1866 | at George Watkins, Edgefield County, SC |
upon there oaths do say that George Watkins came to his death by a Gun shot wound in the hands of Newton Corley |
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Giles Guess | colored | February 2, 1882 | at the hosue of John Smith, Anderson County, SC | pistol |
do say that the deceased was willfully killed by the hand of one Isaac Putnam by shooting deceased with a pistol and that Silas Putnam was accessory to the killing about seven or eight oclock in the afternoon at the house of one John Smith |
Green | negro boy | July 23, 1850 | at the house of John Cheatham, Edgefield County, SC | knife |
upon their Oaths do say . . .that the said boy, Green . . . did come to his death by the infliction of a wound by the hands of Joseph Haluaker, on Turkey Creek . . .by a knife |
Griff Zimmerman | October 9, 1899 | at Johnston Township, Edgefield County, SC | pistol |
upon their Oaths do Say: That at the house of Millege Burton on the land of J.T. Strother . . . Griff Zimmerman was killed by a pistol Shot by the hands of Millege Burton |
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Gus Blocker | August 18, 1892 | at the plantion of July Blocker, Edgefield County, SC |
upon their oaths do Say that the Said Gus Blocker came to his death by a gun Shot in the hands of one Isiac[?] Blocker |
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Haigood Mirfan[?] | Fairfield County, SC |
NO OFFICIAL STATEMENT |
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Halloway Thomas | June 5, 1940 | at Cheraw, Chesterfield County, SC | chair |
upon their oaths do say that Halloway Thomas received in Chesterfield County a mortal wound by Being Struck with Chair in the hands of Willie Robinson (alias Jack) |
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Haman Miller | October 30, 1824 | at Blacks Store, Laurens County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that the said Haman Miller came to his Death by Violence committed on his sides by a number of Blows with the fist of John Prince and a fall... as a consequence of of Said Blows, and that the said John Prince did then and there feloniously Kill and Murder, against the peace and Dignity of this State. |
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Hammond Frasier | November 6, 1897 | at Trenton S.C., Edgefield County, SC | pistol |
upon their oaths do Say: That Hammond Frasier come to his death by a gun Shot wound and the Said wound was made by a pistol in the hand of James Hampton |
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Hardy Boulware | January 2, 1862 | at Hardy Boulwares, Edgefield County, SC |
by the oaths of that Hardy Bolware came to his death by a gun shot wound from the hands of David W. Padgett |
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Harriet M. Melton | April 18, 1871 | at the residence of Robert Melton, Chesterfield County, SC |
upon their oaths, do say: That Mrs Harriet M. Melton came to her death by a gunshot wound inflicted form the hands of some person or persons unknown to this Jury |
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Harry | May 13, 1822 | at Alexander Wilkinsons, Laurens County, SC |
do say upon their oaths; So the Jurors aforesaid, upon their oaths aforesaid, Say that the aforesaid Negro man Harry (the servant of the said Alexander Wilinson) that he (Harry) came to his death by the means of and with the abuse that he received (on Sunday Last past being the twelth day of this instant (May))from his master Alexander Wilkinson and by his order, and not otherwise... |
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Harry | slave | May 20, 1863 | at Jesse Gomellions, Edgefield County, SC | knife |
upon there oaths do say that. . .the said Harry came to his death by a wound inflicted in the left side by a knife or some sharp Pointed instrument in the hands of Wilce[?] a slave belonging to James Neal |
Harry | slave | December 25, 1858 | at Col Arthur Sinkins[?], Edgefield County, SC | knife |
upon their oaths do say that the aforesaid Harry a slave belonging to Mrs Mary Crooker in an affray at Col Arthur Sinkins. . .by a knife or sharp pointed instrument in the hands of Elbert a slave belonging to Col Arthur Sinkins |
Harry Anderson | December 16, 1882 | at Clinton Ward, Edgefield County, SC | pistol |
upon their oaths do say that eceased came to his death from gun shot wound ... made with a pistol ... the shot being fired by one Andrew Harris |
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Harry Shelton | March 28, 1871 | in the County aforesaid, Fairfield County, SC |
do say upon their oaths that the said Harry Shelton came to his Death from a Ball shot from a pistol or Rifle by an unknown hand being done near Shelton Depot. |
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Hattie Threatt McManus | February 1, 1934 | at Dudley, Chesterfield County, SC | pistol |
upon their oaths, do say: Hattie Threatt McManus came to her death by Gun shot wound in the hands of J. T. McManus |
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Haup W. Oliver | June 9, 1912 | [no location given], Chesterfield County, SC |
[No official declaration] |