[265] ploughing, and engaged in many other similar employments. Is it within woman's sphere to perform such labors? X. One of the proprietors of the Montgomery (Alabama) Mail, at the period of my visit to that town, described to me the execution by a mob of a negro by fire at the stake. He had either killed a white man or ravished a white girl — I have since forgotten which-but one sentence of his account, for its characteristic Southern inhumanity to the negro, I shall never forget to my dying day. “They piled pretty green wood on the fire, to make it burn slow; he gave one terrible yell before he died; and, every time the wind blew from him, there was the d----dest stench of burnt flesh. D----n it, how it did smell.” This was said, laughingly. Several well authenticated cases of the same fiendish torture have occurred within the last five years. Parson Brownlow, as I have already stated, eulogized the barbarity in one instance. XI. As against whites, in courts of justice, the negro has not the faintest chance of fairness. I could illustrate this statement by citing examples; but, as a South Carolina Governor has confessed the fact, it will suffice to quote his admission. Says Governor Adams in his message for 1855:
The administration of our laws, in relation to our colored population, by our courts of magistrates and freeholders, as these courts are at present constituted, calls loudly for reform. Their decisions are Rarely in conformity with justice or humanity. I have felt constrained, in a majority of the cases brought to my notice, either to modify the sentence, or set it aside altogether.XII. Colonel Benton, in a lecture that he delivered
