Volume III Part 72 (1/2)

The Macon (Georgia) Telegraph of October 9, 1838, contains the following notice of two affrays in that place, in each of which an individual was killed, one on Tuesday and the other on Sat.u.r.day of the same week. In publis.h.i.+ng the case, the Macon editor remarks:

”We are compelled to remark on the inefficiency of our laws in bringing to the bar of public justice, persons committing capital offences. Under the present mode, a man has nothing more to do than to leave the state, or step over to Texas, or some other place not farther off, and he need entertain no fear of being apprehended. So long as such a state of things is permitted to exist, just so long will every man who has an enemy (and there are but few who have not) _be in constant danger of being shot down in the streets_.”

To these remarks of the Macon editor, who is in the centre of the state, near the capital, the editor of the Darien Telegraph, two hundred miles distant, responds as follows, in his paper of October 30. 1838.

”The remarks of our contemporary are not without cause. They apply, with peculiar force, to this community. _Murderers and rioters will never stand in need of a sanctuary as long as Darien is what it is_.”

It is a coincidence which carries a comment with it, that in less than a week after this Darien editor made these remarks, he was attacked in the street by ”_fourteen_ gentlemen” armed with bludgeons, knives, dirks, pistols, &c., and would doubtless have been butchered on the spot if he had not been rescued.

We give the following statement at length as the chief perpetrator of the outrages, Col. W.N. Bishop, was at the time a high functionary of the State of Georgia, and, as we learn from the Macon Messenger, still holds two public offices in the State, one of them from the direct appointment of the governor.

From the ”Georgia Messenger” of August 25, 1837.

”During the administration of WILSON LUMPKIN, WILLIAM N. BISHOP received from his Excellency the appointment of Indian Agent, in the place of William Springer. During that year (1834,) the said governor gave the command of a company of men, 40 in number, to the said W.N.

Bishop, to be selected by him, and armed with the muskets of the State. This band was organized for the special purpose of keeping the Cherokees in subjection, and although it is a notorious fact that the Cherokees in the neighborhood of Spring Place were peaceable and by no means refractory, the said band were kept there, and seldom made any excursion whatever out of the county of Murray. It is also _a notorious fact_, that the said band, from the day of their organization, never permitted a citizen of Murray county opposed to the dominant party of Georgia, to exercise the right of suffrage at any election whatever. From that period to the last of January election, the said band appeared at the polls with the arms of the State, rejecting every vote that ”was not of the true stripe,” as they called it. That they frequently seized and dragged to the polls honest citizens, and compelled them to vote contrary to their will.

”Such acts of arbitrary despotism were tolerated by the administration. Appeals from the citizens of Murray county brought them no relief--and incensed at such outrages, they determined on the first Monday in January last, to turn out and elect such Judges of the Inferior Court and county officers, as would be above the control of Bishop, that he might thereby be prevented from packing such a jury as he chose to try him for his brutal and unconst.i.tutional outrages on their rights. Accordingly on Sunday evening previous to the election, about twenty citizens who lived a distance from the county site, came in unarmed and unprepared for battle, intending to remain in town, vote in the morning and return home. They were met by Bishop and his State band, and asked by the former 'whether they were for peace or war.' They unanimously responded, ”we are for peace:' At that moment Bishop ordered a fire, and instantly _every musket of his band was discharged on those citizens_, 5 of whom were wounded, and others escaped with bullet holes in their clothes. Not satisfied with the outrage, _they dragged an aged man from his wagon and beat him nearly to death_.

”In this way the voters were driven from Spring Place, and before day light the next morning, the polls were opened by order of Bishop, and soon after sun rise they were closed; Bishop having ascertained that the band and Schley men had all voted. A runner was then dispatched to Milledgeville, and received from Governor Schley commissions for those self-made officers of Bishop's, two of whom have since runaway, and the rest have been called on by the citizens of the county to resign, being each members of Bishop's band, and doubtless runaways from other States.

”After these outrages, Bishop apprehending an appeal to the judiciary on the part of the injured citizens of Murray county, had a jury drawn to suit him and appointed one of his band Clerk of the Superior Court.

For these acts, the Governor and officers of the Central Bank rewarded him with an office in the Bank of the State, since which his own jury found _eleven true bills_ against him.”

In the Milledgeville Federal Union of May 2, 1837, we find the following presentment of the Grand Jury of Union County, Georgia, which as it shows some relics of a moral sense, still lingering in the state we insert.

Presentment of the Grand Jury of Union Co., March term, 1837.

”We would notice, as a subject of painful interest, the appointment of Wm. N. Bishop to the high and responsible office of Teller, of the Central Bank of the State of Georgia--an inst.i.tution of such magnitude as to merit and demand the most unslumbering vigilance of the freemen of this State; as a portion of whom, we feel bound to express our _indignant reprehension_ of the promotion of such a character to one of its most responsible posts--and do exceedingly regret the blindness or _depravity_ of those who can sanction such a measure.

”We request that our presentment be published in the Miners' Recorder and Federal Union.

JOHN MARTIN, Foreman”

On motion of Henry L. Sims, Solicitor General, ”Ordered by the court, that the presentments of the Grand Jury, be published according to their request.” THOMAS HENRY, Clerk.

The same paper, four weeks after publis.h.i.+ng the preceding facts, contained the following: we give it in detail as the wretch who enacted the tragedy was another public functionary of the state of Georgia and acting in an official capacity.

”MURDER.--One of the most brutal and inhuman murders it has ever fallen to our lot to notice, was lately committed in Cherokee county, by Julius Bates, the son of the princ.i.p.al keeper of the Penitentiary, upon an Indian.

”The circ.u.mstances as detailed to us by the most respectable men of both parties, are these. At the last Superior Court of Ca.s.s county, the unfortunate Indian was sentenced to the Penitentiary. Bates, as _one of the Penitentiary guard_, was sent with another to carry him and others, from other counties to Milledgeville. He started from Ca.s.sville with the Indian ironed and bare footed; and walked him within a quarter of a mile of Canton, the C.H. in Cherokee, a distance of twenty-eight to thirty miles, over a very rough road in little more than half the day. On arriving at a small creek near town, the Indian [who had walked until the _soles of his feet were off and those of his heel turned back_,] made signs to get water, Bates refused to let him, and ordered him to go on: the Indian stopped and finally set down, whereupon Bates dismounted and gathering a pine knot, commenced and continued beating him and jirking him by a chain around his neck, until the citizens of the village were drawn there by the severity of the blows. The unfortunate creature was taken up to town and died in a few hours.

”An inquest was held, and the jury found a verdict of murder by Bates.

A warrant was issued, but Bates had departed that morning in charge of other prisoners taken from Canton, and the worthy officers of the county desisted from his pursuit, 'because they apprehended he had pa.s.sed the limits of the county.' We understand that the warrant was immediately sent to the Governor to have him arrested. Will it be done? We shall see.”

Having devoted so much s.p.a.ce to a revelation of the state of society among the slaveholders of Georgia, we will tax the reader's patience with only a single ill.u.s.tration of the public sentiment--the degree of actual legal protection enjoyed in the state of North Carolina.

North Carolina was settled about two centuries ago; its present white population is about five hundred thousand.