scorn of dissimulation, that straightforward determination not to call a bad thing by a good name, even when most popular and reputable and legal, which it is to be wished could be more frequently seen, both in our Northern and Southern States, There is but one sole regret; and that is that such a man, with such a mind, should have been merely an expositor, and not a reformer of law.
CHAPTER III.
SUTHER v. THE COMMONWEALTH—THE NE PLUS ULTRA OF LEGAL HUMANITY.
"Yet in the face of such laws and decisions as these! Mrs. Stowe, &c."—Courier & Enquirer.
The case of Souther v. the Commonwealth has been cited by the Courier & Enquirer as a particularly favorable specimen of judicial proceedings under the slave-code, with the following remark:
And yet, in the face of such laws and decisions as these, Mrs. Stowe winds up a long series of cruelties upon her other black personages, by causing her faultless hero, Tom, to be literally whipped to death in Louisiana, by his master, Legree; and these acts, which the laws make criminal, and punish as such, she sets forth in the most repulsive colors, to illustrate the institution of slavery!
By the above language the author was led into the supposition that this case had been conducted in a manner so creditable to the feelings of our common humanity as to present a fairer side of criminal jurisprudence in this respect. She accordingly took the pains to procure a report of the case, designing to publish it as an offset to the many barbarities which research into this branch of the subject obliges one to unfold. A legal gentleman has copied the case from Grattan's Reports, and it is here given. If the reader is astounded at it, he cannot be more so than was the writer.
Souther v. The Commonwealth. 7 Grattan, 673, 1851.
Simeon Souther was indicted at the October Term, 1850, of the Circuit Court for the County of Hanover, for the murder of his own slave. The indictment contained fifteen counts, in which the various modes of punishment and torture by which the homicide was charged to have been committed were stated singly, and in various combinations, The fifteenth count unites them all: and, as the court certifies that the indictment was sustained by the evidence, the giving the facts stated in that count will show what was the charge against the prisoner, and what was the proof to sustain it.
The count charged that on the 1st day of September, 1849, the prisoner tied his negro slave, Sam, with ropes about his wrists, neck, body, legs and ankles, to a tree. That whilst so tied, the prisoner first whipped the slave with switches. That he next beat and cobbed the slave with a shingle, and compelled two of his slaves, a man and a woman, also to cob the deceased with the shingle. That whilst the deceased was so tied to the tree, the prisoner did strike, knock, kick, stamp and beat him upon various parts of his head, face and body; that he applied fire to his body; * * * * that he then washed his body with warm water, in which pods of red pepper had been put and steeped; and he compelled his two slaves aforesaid also to wash him with this same preparation of warm water and red pepper. That after the tying, whipping, cobbing, striking, beating, knocking, kicking, stamping, wounding, bruising, lacerating, burning, washing and torturing, as
particulars of the life of Judge Ruffin, which have proved interesting to her, and may also to the reader.
From the Raleigh (N. C.) Register.
Resignation of the Chief Justice of the State of North Carolina.
He is now, as we learn, in the sixty-fifth year of his age, in full possession of his usual excellent health, unaffected, so far as we can discover, in his natural vigor and strength, and certainly without any symptom of mental decay. Forty-five years ago he commenced the practice of the law. He has been on the bench twenty-eight years, of which time he has been one of the Supreme Court twenty-three years. During this long public career he has, in a pecuniary point of view, sacrificed many thousands; for there has been no time of it in which he might not, with perfect ease, have doubled, by practice, the amount of his salary as judge.
"To the Honorable the General Assembly of North Carolina, now in session.
"I have the honor to be, gentlemen, your most obliged and obedient servant, Thomas Ruffin
"Raleigh, November 10, 1852."
