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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infant child | infant child | August 5, 1878 | at the residence of H J Wright, Edgefield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say the female Child . . . Came to its death by Misfortune or accident |
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infant child | infant child | July 21, 1851 | at the residence of Mrs. Elizabeth Campbell, Greenville County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that . . . said infant cause to its death by misfortune or accident either in the act of being born or short time after its birth |
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infant child | infant child | April 14, 1895 | at Charley Moors, Edgefield County, SC |
Upon their oaths do say that the child came to its death at the hands of Laura White and her daughter Anna by some means unknown |
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Infant child of Ellen, enslaved by Robert Workman | Infant child of Ellen, enslaved by Robert Workman | July 6, 1855 | at a grave yard near Odells Mill, Laurens County, SC |
upon their Oaths do say that the said Infant came to its death by violence by the hand of some person unknown against the peace and dignity of the same State aforesaid and that the negro woman that Doct J.J. Boozer was sent for to see is an Idiot. |
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Infant child of Susanah Finny | Infant child of Susanah Finny | June 8, 1821 | at the House of Mary Holland, Laurens County, SC |
do say upon their oaths, and so the Jurors aforesaid upon their oaths aforesaid, say that the aforesaid infant Child the aforesaid Susannah Finny, then and there feloniously Did kill and murder, against the peace of this State. |
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Infant enslaved by W.B. Henderson | Infant enslaved by W.B. Henderson | January 14, 1865 | at W.B. Hendersons, Laurens County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that they beloeve the Infant slave above mentioned came to its death by violence inflicted by the hands of some unknown person by thrusting a common sewing needle through the scalp into the brain. . .Either by the hand of the Mother, or The Slave Girl Lucy, The property of W.B. Henderson. |
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Infant enslaved by William Philson | Infant enslaved by William Philson | September 11, 1858 | at the plantation settlement of William Philson, Laurens County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that the said child came to its death at the residence of Wm Philson in Laurens District by the Hands of Naty & Maria Negro women slaves the property of Wm Philson against the peace & Dignity of the State aforesaid. |
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infant female child | infant female child | March 31, 1857 | at Turner Duncan's, Greenville County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that the infanct was killed or homicideed by some person or persons, or (by some means) came to its death to the jurors unknown |
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infant male child | infant male child | October 28, 1851 | at the Reedy River Factory, Greenville County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that the said infant male child was killed and homicideed by some person or persons (or by some means) to the jurors unknown |
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infant male child | infant male child | March 27, 1879 | at Greenville, Greenville County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that the aforesaid unknown male child came to his death from causes to this jury unknown |
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Infant male child of G.Y. Jennings | Infant male child of G.Y. Jennings | April 10, 1893 | behind Elihu Bullock's stables, Laurens County, SC |
We the Jury of inquest... find that this child came to his death. . .By the hands of G.Y. Jennings, By some means unknown to us, And aided And abetted by Elihu Bullock Clara Bullock and wife of G.Y. Jennings against the peace and dignity of the state of So Car. |
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Infant of Nann Williams | Infant of Nann Williams | February 4, 1889 | at Nelly Sanders, Laurens County, SC |
upon their oaths do say. And so the Jurors aforesaid do say that the said infant came to its death by the hands its mother Nann Williams, by strangulation at Nelly Sanders in Laurens County and State aforesaid, on the the morning of the third day of February AD 1889. |
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infant, (male) | infant, (male) | April 29, 1857 | at Potterville, Edgefield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say. . .from the effects of Laudanum. . .administerted by Mrs Matilda Reynolds. . .the aforesaid infant (male child) in manner and for aforesaid, Matilda Reynolds, then and there feloniously did Kill |
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Irving Stallings | March 3, 1857 | at Court House, Horry County, SC |
upon their Oaths aforesaid do say, that the aforesaid Jeremiah Benson, (Called J. M. Benson) in manner and form aforesaid Irving Stallings, then and there feloniously did Kill against the Peace and dignity of the same state aforesaid |
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Isaac Boseley | July 5, 1880 | at Ridge Spring, Edgefield County, SC | pistol |
upon their oath aforesaid, do say, that the aforesaid Isaack Boseley came to his death by a gun Shot wound from a Pistol in the hands of one Peter Ramage |
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Isaac Matthias Jones | October 14, 1858 | at the house of Lewis Jones (Sr) at Edgefield C.H., Edgefield County, SC | knife |
upon their oaths do say that the deceased I.M. Jones was kill by Thomas Markey, in the Public Square in front of Truman Roots store. . .by a knife in the hands of the aforesaid Markey |
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Isaac Salter | June 7, 1872 | at the old Colemans Quarter, Laurens County, SC | pistol |
upon their oaths do say that Isaac Salter came to his death, upon their oaths do sayeth by a pistol shot in the hands of Amos Anderson |
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Isaac Whitworth | March 8, 1840 | at Isaac Whitworths, Laurens County, SC | stick |
do say upon their oaths that the said Decd. Came to his death by blow recd. By a stick in the hand of Negro boy named Willis, the property of Jas Watts Esq. on the on the 7th Inst |
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Isaah Golden | August 27, 1860 | at Silverton Beach iland, Edgefield County, SC | knife |
upon there oaths do say that the deceased Came to his death. . .by John Williams sen and John Williams Jr that they did feloniously killed the deceased Isaah Golden with a knife |
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Isham Glover | August 9, 1892 | at Edgefield C.H., Edgefield County, SC |
upon their oaths do Say that Isham Glover came to his death by a gun Shot wound in the hands of Parties unknown |
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Isham Glover | August 10, 1892 | at Edgefield C.H., Edgefield County, SC |
upon their Oaths do Say that the said Isham Glover came to his death from the effects of a gun Shot wound in the hands of C.H. Anderson |
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J. D. Ouzts | December 7, 1891 | at Edgefield, Edgefield County, SC | pistol |
upon their oaths do say. . .that the aforesaid J.D. Ouzts came to his death from a pistol shot wound in the hands of Richard Lundy and that it was willfull murder |
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J. Edward Sims | March 2, 1855 | at the house of Doct. James Gages, Union County, SC | pistol |
upon their oathes do say. . . that the aforesaid N R E Mayer Feloniously did with a Pistol against the Peace & dignity of the state aforesaid near the printing office in unvile shoot & Killed the said J Edward Sims |
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J. H. Christian | July 21, 1856 | in the village of Edgefield in Room No 11, in B. J. Ryans Hotel, Edgefield County, SC | pistol |
upon their oaths do say, that the deceased J.[?] H. Christian came to his death by the discharge of a pistol in the hands of G.[?] D. Tilman |
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J. M. Clark | July 19, 1897 | at J.M. Clark's residence, Laurens County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that J.M. Clark came to his death by Gun shot wounds inflicted by the hands of Willie Franks on the 10th day of June 1897 and that his father F.B. Franks was accessory to the act. |
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J. M. King | September 29, 1913 | at McBee, Chesterfield County, SC | pistol |
upon their oaths, do say: Jm King came to his death from pistol shot wounds in the Hands of Jim Davis |
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J. M. Long | October 10, 1891 | at J. M. Longs, Edgefield County, SC |
upon their Oaths do Say That he came to his death by a gun Shot wound from the hands of Anthany Carter |
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J.D. "Doc" Wallace | March 19, 1915 | at Pageland, Chesterfield County, SC |
upon their oaths, do say: Dock Wallace came to his death by pistol shot wound in the hands of Walker Arant. |
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Jack | slave | September 4, 1862 | at Mrs. Ann Johnson's residence, Anderson County, SC | pistol |
do say that the said Jack did come to his death from a pistol shot inflicted by George T. Smith the overseer of Mrs. Ann Johnson. . .the act was done by him intentionally for disobeience. |
Jack | December 30, 1851 | at Big Bay, Horry County, SC | stomped |
upon their Oaths do say, that when and where they Know not, nor by what instrument the deceast was Kild, But that the said Jack was feloniously by Beeting, that the said Jack was Killed and murdered by some person or persons by some means to the Jurors unknown |
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Jacob | July 31, 1861 | at the residence of Dr. G.B. Pearson, Fairfield County, SC | knife |
upon their oaths do say that Jacob came to his death by wounds inflicted by a knife in the hands of John Murphy, overseer. |
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Jacob Horn | February 25, 1866 | at the hous of Jacob Horns, Edgefield County, SC |
upon there Oaths do say that Jacob Horn came to his death by a Malicious discharge of a Gun or Pistol entering the left Groin from which wound he [?] langushed and languishing died in about half an hour |
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Jake | slave | July 24, 1852 | at the plantation of Mrs. Amelia Haile near the bridge crossing the Wateree River, Kershaw County, SC | brick |
that the slave Jake came to his death from a blow or blows inflicted on his head by a brick in the hands of Ceily the nurse, a slave property of Charles Haile |
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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James Anders | November 28, 1881 | at M. B. Ander's, Greenville County, SC | pistol |
he came to his death by the Shooting of some kind of fire arms two holes in his Head and one in the lore part of his Bowels . . .he was shot by a pistol from the hand of one Bengeman |
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James B. Brawly | November 2, 1842 | at Spartanburgh Court House, Spartanburg County, SC | pocket knife |
upon their oaths do say that the sd. J.B. Brawly came to his death by a stab wound from a common packet kinfe inflicted on his left side opposite his navel and about 4 inches from the same by the hand of John Davis |
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James Bledsoe | May 15, 1893 | at Dr D.P. Lalsrones[?] Residence, Edgefield County, SC | pistol |
upon their oaths do say that the said James Bledsoe aforesaid came to his death from the effects of Pistol shot wounds at the hands of Capers Thomas |
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James Booth | August 23, 1878 | at E. C. House, Edgefield County, SC |
upon their oaths do Say that the said Jas Booth. . .came to his death by pistol Shots from the hands of parties unknown |
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James Busby | June 21, 1860 | at J[?]essey L. J[?]eter, Union County, SC | shotgun |
upon their oaths do say that from wounds on the decsd and the evidence before them they do believe decsd came to his death by the hands of one David E Jeter[?] in the yard of Jessey[?] L Jeter ... [?] shooting him with a shot gun |
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James Duckett | November 9, 1859 | at James Sutton's, Greenville County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that he came to his death by a wound inflicted by a sharp instrument held in the hands of Boy named Abe the property of H. J. Gilreath |
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James Hembree | September 24, 1835 | at the house of Jesse Hembree, Anderson County, SC | knife or dirk |
do say upon their oaths that the said James Hembree?was killed and murderd by Nancy Black and Samuel Black by striking with a club or stick on the neck and shoulders and stabbing with a knife or dirk through the muscular part of the left thigh |
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James Keenan | February 21, 1865 | at Union Court House, Union County, SC | pistol |
upon their oaths do say that the deceased was killed by a bullet discharged from a pistol in the house of Dr. John P. Thomas . . .in the Jail of Union District |
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James M. D'young | February 16, 1879 | at John J. Moore's, Spartanburg County, SC | |||
James M. Rhodes | August 27, 1862 | at the residence of James M. Rhodes, Spartanburg County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that. . .J. William M. Brown ... then and there [did] inflict three severe blows upon the head of deceased fracturing his skull in two places |
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James Mayes | infant | March 24, 1870 | taken [???], Greenville County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that the said James Mays came to his death at A. M. Gilreaths . . .cause unknown . . .misfortune or accident |
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James Nelson | November 22, 1903 | at E. C. Clark's place, Chesterfield County, SC |
We the undersigned juror of inquest over the body of James Nelson find that he Come to his death by being hanged by some unKnown Partyes. |
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James Pinson | deserter | December 5, 1864 | at Greenville CH, Greenville County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that . . .was killed and homicideed by some person or persons (by a gun shot (in the breast on the morng of the 4th inst) to) the jurors unknown |
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James Ramsey | December 12, 1869 | at the residence of Andrew Ramsay Sr, Edgefield County, SC | pistol |
upon their oaths do say that the said deceased came to his death by the discharge of a pistol in the hands of Wm Murrell Jr loaded with leaden bullets which bullets entered the left side |
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James Reynolds | December 20, 1860 | at the residence of James Reynolds, Edgefield County, SC |
upon there oaths do say that the said James Reynolds came to his death feloniously at the hand of Joseph Samuel. . .from the affects of a wound inflicted on the head Just above the left ear by a large stick |
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James Thomas | colored | July 20, 1869 | at Liberty Hill County, Edgefield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that James Thomas came to his death by a gun shot wound in the stomach . . .from a gun in the hands of some person or person unknown |