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.
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 |
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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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Cleveland Smith | December 13, 1934 | at McBee, Chesterfield County, SC | shotgun |
upon their oaths do say that Cleveland Smith received in Chesterfield County a mortal wound by Shot gun in the hands of Coleman Smothers on the 12 day of December 1934, and that from such mortal wound deceased died in Chesterfield County on 12-12-34. |
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Claude McKenzie | February 1, 1935 | at McBee, Chesterfield County, SC |
Upon their oath do say that Claude McKenzie received in Chesterfield County a mortal wound by Shot Gun done willfully . . . in the hands of Gillespie McKenzie |
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Hayes Brown | May 11, 1935 | at Cheraw, Chesterfield County, SC | pistol |
upon their oaths do say that Hayes Brown received in Chesterfield County a mortal wound by a pistol in the hands of Lum Ross on the 5th day of May 1935, and that from such mortal wound deceased died in Wadesboro on May 6th 1935. |
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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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D. J. "Jim" Hildrith | October 21, 1935 | at M. T. Crogham, Chesterfield County, SC | brick |
Upon their oaths do say that J. G. Hildrith received in Chesterfield County a mortal wound by Brick Bat in the hands of Otis Home on the 13 day of October 1935, and that from such mortal wound deceased died in Muess SC. |
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John Jefferson | March 17, 1936 | at Chesterfield, Chesterfield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that John Jefferson received in Chesterfield County a mortal wound by Draarn in the hands of Aiken Jefferson |
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Nettie Jefferson | March 17, 1936 | at Chesterfield, Chesterfield County, SC | frying pan |
upon their oaths do say that Nettie Jefferson received in Chesterfield County a mortal wound by a frying Pan in the hands of Alonzo Jefferson |
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John W. Buchanan | July 18, 1936 | at Cheraw, Chesterfield County, SC | rock |
upon their oaths do say that John W. Buchanan received in _____ County a mortal wound by Rock in the hands of Ed. Mack, Jr. |
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John Gary Baker | July 20, 1936 | at Augelus, Chesterfield County, SC | pistol |
upon their oaths do say that John G. Baker received in Chesterfield County a mortal wound by Pistol shot in the hands of Walter Jowers |
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Dan McMilan | October 17, 1936 | at Jefferson, Chesterfield County, SC | hoe |
upon their oaths do say that come by his death struck hoe on head in hands of Luther Miller. |
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Archie Woods | February 8, 1937 | at Cheraw, Chesterfield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that Archie Woods received in Chesterfield County a mortal wound by Pistol Shot in the hands of Marion Johnson |
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Baby Boatwright | February 26, 1937 | at Jefferson, Chesterfield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that Baby Boatwright received in Chesterfield County a mortal wound by a stick in the hands of Gertrude Boatwright |
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Albert Jenkins | September 13, 1937 | at Cheraw, Chesterfield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that Albert Jenkins received in Chesterfield County a mortal wound by Pistol Bullet in the hands of Buster Ellebre |
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Will Wallace | September 19, 1937 | at Chesterfield, Chesterfield County, SC | stick |
upon their oaths do say that Will Wallace received in Chesterfield County a mortal wound by Blunt Instrument (Stick) in the hands of Homer Bunn |
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Albert Blakeney | October 18, 1937 | at Pageland, Chesterfield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that Albert Blakeney received in Chesterfield County a mortal wound by Pistol Shot in the hands of Herman Massey |
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Boyd Cutner | December 21, 1937 | at Cheraw, S.C., Chesterfield County, SC | rifle |
We the jorors after considering evidence in this case conclude that Boyd Cutner came to his death from gun shot wound in the neck said gun 22 (caliber rifle) in the hands of Ben Ganzy |
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Council Tucker | January 16, 1938 | at Cheraw, Chesterfield County, SC | pistol |
upon their oaths do say that Council Tucker received in Chesterfield County a mortal wound by Pistol shot in the hands Louis Wright |
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Sarah Watson | January 31, 1938 | at Cheraw, Chesterfield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that Sarah Watson received in Chesterfield County a mortal wound by Buckshot from Shotgun in the hands of Jas. Stacks |
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James "Poogie" Outen | May 13, 1938 | at McBee, Chesterfield County, SC | shotgun |
upon their oaths do say that James (Poogie) Outen received in Chesterfield County a mortal wound by Shot Gun in the hands of Tonk Robinson |
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Thelma Wallace Gainey | May 30, 1938 | at Cheraw, Chesterfield County, SC | pistol |
upon their oaths do say that Thelma Wallace Gainey received in Chesterfield County a mortal wound by Pistol in the hands of Henry Tiner |
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Bonnie Redfern | December 18, 1939 | at Chesterfield, Chesterfield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that Bonnie Redfern received in Chesterfield County a mortal wound by Shot Gun Wounds in the hands of Rob Williams |
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Mose Lowery | March 16, 1940 | at Chesterfield, S. C., Chesterfield County, SC | pocket knife |
upon their oaths do say that Mose Lowery received in Chesterfield County a mortal wound by pocket knife in the hands of unknown hands |
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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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James W. Allred Sr. | September 21, 1940 | at Cheraw, Chesterfield County, SC | automobile |
upon their oaths do say that James W. Allred, Sr. received in Chesterfield County a mortal wound by Automobile Collision in the hands of Wade A. Outlaw |
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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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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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Bertha Evans | 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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David Cornelius Boan | January 18, 1943 | at Cheraw, S.C., Chesterfield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that David Cornelius Boan received in Chesterfield County a mortal wound by Shot gun in the hands of Hiram Mareen Linton |
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Howard Braxton | April 20, 1943 | at Cheraw, Chesterfield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that Howard Braxton received in Chesterfield County a mortal wound by 38 Pistol in the hands of Wallace Turner |
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David Primus | July 5, 1943 | at Cheraw, S.C., Chesterfield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that David Primus received in Chesterfield County a mortal wound by Shot gun in the hands of Ernest (Peter) Howard |
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Charles Streater | September 13, 1943 | at Chesterfield, Chesterfield County, SC | knife |
upon their oaths do say that Charles Streater received in Chesterfield County a mortal wound by Knife in the hands of Cary Johnson |
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Walter Brown | November 26, 1943 | at Cheraw, Chesterfield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that Walter Brown received in Chesterfield County a mortal wound by _______ in the hands of Mose McKay. . . He came to his death by a gun in hands of Mose McKay. |
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Lilie May Dove | November 29, 1943 | at Cheraw, Chesterfield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that Flossie Sellers received in Chesterfield County a mortal wound by 22 Caliber rifle in the hands of Lillie Mae Dove |
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Willie Hampton | February 17, 1944 | at Cheraw, S.C., Chesterfield County, SC | knife |
upon their oaths do say that Willie Hampton received in Chesterfield County a mortal wound by Knife wound in the hands of Willie Mae Hampton |
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Albert Shaw | July 1, 1946 | at Chesterfield, Chesterfield County, SC | shotgun |
upon their oaths do say that Albert Shaw received in Chesterfield County a mortal wound by Shot gun in the hands of Oliver Johnson |
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Leonard Clark | July 3, 1946 | at Jefferson, SC, Chesterfield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that Leonard Clark received in Chesterfield County a mortal wound by 38 Pistol in the hands of Bill Sowell |
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Kenneth M. Douglas | October 17, 1946 | at Cheraw, Chesterfield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that Kenneth M. Douglas received in Chesterfield County a mortal wound by 32 Pistol in the hands of M. Stuart Funderburk |
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Sylvester Streater | August 18, 1947 | at Chesterfield, S. C., Chesterfield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that Sylvester Streater received in Chesterfield County a mortal wound by 38 Pistol in the hands of Thelma Williams Streater |
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Reece Chapman | July 26, 1948 | at Chesterfield, South Carolina, Chesterfield County, SC |
VERDICT: The said Reece Chapman came to his death by a 31 Pistol at the hands of Buck Diggs. |
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Dorothy Mae Bowman | August 3, 1948 | at Cheraw, S.C., Chesterfield County, SC | knife |
upon their oaths do say thatDorothy Mae Bowman received in Chesterfield County a mortal wound by knife |
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William Clyburn | September 15, 1948 | at Pageland, S.C., Chesterfield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that William Clyburn received in Chesterfield County a mortal wound by 38 S&W Pistol in the hands of Mr. Ike Plyler. . . The Jury recommends that I. K. Plyler be not held responsible -- justifiable Homicide |
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Howard E. Fields | September 24, 1948 | at Chesterfield, S. C., Chesterfield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that Howard E. Fields received in Chesterfield County a mortal wound by_______ in the hands of Lee Freeman & Garland Smith |