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 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
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 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Elizer | slave | June 13, 1845 | at the plantation of Mrs S. C. Sims, Union County, SC |
upon their oaths do say . . .the death was occasioned by the violent abuse given her by the hands of David R. Henderson the overseer of [??] Sims by beating her with such weapons as was calculated to destroy life |
|
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 |
||
Arch | September 4, 1864 | at SR Todds plantation, Laurens County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that he came to his death by a gun shot wound, by M.P. Traynham in self defence at SR Todds plantation about one oclock the 3rd Sept Inst AD 1864. |
||
Edgar Kelly | December 27, 1913 | at Colan Herdon's, Chesterfield County, SC |
upon their oaths, do say: Edgar Kelley came to his death by Knife wounds in the hand of Neal Hendrix |
||
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 |
||
slave | slave | July 23, 1820 | Kershaw County, SC |
do say upon their oaths [that] the said Henry [Schrock] fired at him [unknown African American] with an intention of shooting him in the legs but by chance seventeen low mold shot took him in the body of which wound he instantly died. |
|
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 |
||
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 |
||
Absalom Causey | September 27, 1863 | at Reaves Mill Branch, Horry County, SC |
upon their oaths do say; that he came to his death by wounds inflicted with a hickory club on the head and side and hip in the hand of Doctor Miles Gilmore |
||
infant Child | infant Child | August 22, 1842 | at or near Mrs Marium Kershaw plantation, Union County, SC |
do say that the bones shown to them at the Stump was the bones of an infant [?] Child and it appeared that they had been put there for the purpose of Consealing them [??] they war put thare in the flesh or cleand of flesh is to us unknown |
|
Jno Fuller | October 6, 1890 | on the plantation of Melmoth Hooker, Laurens County, SC |
by their oaths do say that the said Jno Fuller came to his death "From Gun Shot wounds in the hands of Perry Gray without cause." |
||
Henry Blakeny | June 6, 1893 | at Ana Deason, Chesterfield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that Henry Blakeney came to his death by a Pistol ball in the heands of Thos ingram at the residence of Ana Deason on the 6th June A.D. 1893. |
||
Henry Turner | September 24, 1878 | at Johnstons, Edgefield County, SC |
upon their oath do say that the said Henry Turner came to his death by a pistol or gun shot from the hands of Cato[?] Butler |
||
Will Johnson | August 16, 1931 | at Ingram's Mill, Chesterfield County, SC |
do upon oath say that Will Johnson came to his death by gunshot wound in the hands of Alex Brown. |
||
Rachel | February 18, 1834 | at the grave of a female Negroe Slave named Rachel near the house of Benjamin Boulware, Fairfield County, SC |
do say upon their oaths that they believe that the said negro Rachel came to her death by a blow or stroke on the head from a violent hand which broke her Scull and also from circumstances rest their suspicion on Thomas D Peay owner of said Rachel. |
||
infant | March 29, 1842 | at Tabitha Laird's, Kershaw County, SC |
upon their oaths do say according to evidence taken before us at this inquest do believe that the Tabitha Laird. . .did destroy her infant child against the peace and dignity of said state have no proof how the infant came to its death |
||
Unknown Infant | Unknown Infant | October 17, 1873 | at Abraham Cooks, Laurens County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that the afforesaid infant child in manner & form afforesaid Edna Young Feloniously did kill, against the peace & dignity of the same state afforesaid. . . |
|
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 |
||
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 |
||
Baylis Edwards | May 30, 1864 | at the residence of Franis Edwards, Greenville County, SC |
upon their oaths do say ... that he came to his death by a blow from a [?] on the throat from an unknown hand |
||
Joseph Riddle | April 10, 1856 | at Hamburg, Edgefield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say, that the said Riddle came to his death by a wound or stab with some cutting instrument inflicted just under the left ear by some hand to this jury unknown |
||
Alfred | runaway slave | June 16, 1862 | At Williamston, Anderson County, SC |
do say that within the incorporation of Williamston on the night of the 15th of June. . .that he came to his death by some person or persons unknown to the jurors by hanging by the neck until his body was dead. |
|
Kitty | April 27, 1865 | at David Owens's, Laurens County, SC |
upon their oaths do say. That they have thoroughly Examined the body of the decd Kitty and find no marks of violence on the body sufficient to cause death, and so the Jurors aforesaid, upon their oaths aforesaid do Say that the deceased came to her death by some cause unknown to them... |
||
Henry Blassingham | July 10, 1880 | at Greenville, Greenville County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that . . .the said Henry Blassingham came to his death from the effects of a gun shot wound. The gun being in the hands of Frank Nelson. The ball entering the body to the left and a little above the left nipple and ranging[?] upwards |
||
Jason Hendrick | [no location given], Chesterfield County, SC |
[No official declaration] |
|||
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 |
||
Joe | slave, boy | September 13, 1860 | at the residence of D. M. Glover, Edgefield County, SC |
upon there Oaths do say the said Joe came to his death. . .from the effects of a gunshot in the hand of G M Broadwaters the shot taking affect in the left leg and thigh thereby producing his death |
|
white infant child, boy | white infant child, boy | March 24, 1858 | at John Thomas Boat Landing, Union County, SC |
the infant Came to it Death by it being Killed and throwed in the River |
|
Pollock Chewning | October 14, 1931 | at Cheraw, Chesterfield County, SC |
Upon their oaths do say that Luke Smith and Pollock Chewning came to their Deaths by means un known. |
||
Hugh Barkley | September 20, 1836 | in the house of Hugh Barkley, Fairfield County, SC |
do say upon their oaths that according to the evidence adduced to them the said Hugh Barkley came to his death by a wound inflicted on him with a dirk or knife by Baby Flemming on the left side above the Pubis which we suppose cut the spermatic[?] artery & caused the effusion of blood into the scrotum |
||
infant | September 12, 1882 | at Chester Scruggs well, Spartanburg County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that the said infant was murdered by being thrown into an unused well by some person or persons to the jurors unknown |
||
Certain Mail Bastard Child | Certain Mail Bastard Child | January 16, 1838 | at the house of Joseph McConathy, Laurens County, SC |
do say on these oaths that the said child came to its death either by being smothered or for the want of that attention which was necessary to sustain life and which was Intentionally withheld from it. And that the mother of the child (viz) Martha McConathy was the principle in the crime and that Isabelah McConathy Accessory to it. |
|
Whit Terry | October 19, 1894 | J.K. Corleys Place, Edgefield County, SC |
the said Whit Terry came to his death upon the plantation of J.K. Corley. . .from a gun shot wound inflicted by some one of the searching party, to the jury unknown inflicted in self defense |
||
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 |
||
Jim | April 26, 1856 | on the Public Road leading from Conwayboro, to Bull Creek Ferry, Horry County, SC |
upon their Oaths do say, that the said slave Jim Came to his death from the effect of Gun shot wounds--discharged from a Gun in the hands of J.s W. Holiday, his (the said Slave imployer) said slave at the time being in a state of insubordiation, and we the Jurors, do say that the aforesaid Jo.s W. Holiday did in self defence and contrary to his will, Kill and slave the said boy Jim |
||
Wilson Sosbee | June 19, 1845 | near G.B. Bishop's, Spartanburg County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that the said Wilson Sosbee came to his death by being shot wilfully with a shot gun by the hands of Joseph Hughes[?] |
||
Nelson Smith | freedman, boy | October 4, 1866 | at Andrew Warts, Edgefield County, SC |
upon there oaths do say that Nelson Smith freedman came to his death from being shot with some kind of fire arms in the hands of two persons from the way he was shot by persons unknown |
|
Joseph Butler | October 8, 1836 | at John H. Byrds, Laurens County, SC |
do say upon their oaths, that said Robert Campbell of Laurens District & state afod. Not having the fear of God before his Eyes but being moved and seduced by the devil on the 1st day of October in the year 1836 with force and arms at John H. Byrds in the district aforesaid in and upon the said Joseph Butler then and there being in the peace of God and of the said State feloniously, voluntarily and of his own malice aforethough made an assault; and that the aforesaid Robert Campbell then and there with a certain knife made of Iron... of the Value of Fifty cents which he the said Robert Campbell then and there held in his right hand, the aforesaid Joseph Butler, in and upon the left part of the belly of the said Joseph Butler a littlebelow the navel of the said Joseph Butler then and there feloniously struck and pierced with the knife aforesaid in and upon the aforesaid part of the belly a lttle below the navel of the said Joseph Butler a mortal wound the breadth of one Inch and a half and the depth sufficient to let out his bowels which said mortal wound the aforesaid Joseph Butler after lingering until the eighth day died... |
||
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 |
|
W. H. H. Richards | February 1, 1884 | at Cheraw, Chesterfield County, SC |
upon their oaths, do say: That the said W.H.H. Richards came to his death by a pistol shot, received on 23rd July 184, at the hands fo W B Cash |
||
Charles Little | June 11, 1934 | at Chesterfield, Chesterfield County, SC |
upon their oaths, do say: as the result of pistol shot in the hands of W. Lester Russell |
||
Jim | slave | June 19, 1858 | at the plantation of A.H. Boykin, Kershaw County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that the said negro Jim came to his death. . .from three wounds inflicted on and across the face by some weapon or instrument to the jury unknown in the hands of Dick a slave of William Sanders |
|
Mary Grace Aldrich | infant child | August 11, 1856 | at Graniteville, Edgefield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say. . .that said child came to her death at the time and place aforesaid by having large portions of laudaunum administered by a servant girl the nurse of the name of Clarissa. . .with felonious intent |
|
Sarah Hardy | free girl of color | October 4, 1865 | at William Page's, Union County, SC |
We the Jurors can [?] deceasd came to her death by gun shot wound inflicted by some person unknown |
|
Sindy Brighthop | August 21, 1898 | on S.W. Gardners place, Edgefield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say, that Sindy Brighthop came to her death, from a dislocated neck done by th parties in the house |
||
Squire | October 24, 1865 | at the plantation of Saml. Todd, Laurens County, SC |
upon their Oaths do Say that these two negroes came to there death by being shot by some person or persons unknown to us, from the evidence we think one of them is the boy Squire |
||
infant | April 6, 1865 | near Hobbysville, Spartanburg County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that after a most careful investigation of the whole matter ... that the said child, we are satisfied, came to its death by having the posterior part of its head crushed, wilfully and violently, by the hands of Martha Robinson, the mother of said child, or Elizabeth Robinson, the grandmother of said child, later in the evening of Tuesday the 4th day of April |
||
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 |
||
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 |
||
William Milligan | June 7, 1852 | at Conway borough, Horry County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that we believe he came to his death by wounds inflicted in the throat, and in the Stomach by a Knife in the hands of Absalom Causey |