decision. The business of the city, threatened by the doctrines of equal rights, was also held up, the loss of southern customers with their slaves from the hotels and boarding houses, &c. On their part, the abolitionists offered to discuss the whole subject with any man or men, in public. But the Market House Committee would hear of nothing but the "discontinuance of the Philanthropist and total silence on the subject of slavery." As the only alternative, in case of refusal, they threatened or predicted, it seems of little consequence which, "a MOB-unusual in its numbers, determined in its purpose, and desolating in its ravages." The chairman expressed it as his opinion, that it would be one of unprecedented character-that it would consist of four or five thousand persons, bent on the wide destruction of property, and that two-thirds of the property-holders of the city would join it. That it would be utterly vain for any man or set of men to attempt to restrain it—it would destroy any one who would set himself in opposition to it." The Market House gentlemen being asked whether if a mob could be averted, they would be willing the Philanthropist should be continued, the chairman and several others promptly answered, they would not. The abolitionists were allowed till the next day at noon to give their final answer whether they would discontinue the Philanthropist, when they not only returned a negative, but a number of solid reasons for sticking to their constitutional right. For this heroism of the eight men who composed the Executive Committee of the Ohio Anti-Slavery Society, worthy of as many statues of gold, the dignified embassy from the Market House were doubtless ill prepared. It now only remained for them to rally their wretched tools and having filled them with lies and liquor, carry into execution their bootless threat, the best way they could. The ambassadors resigned their commission in season for the next morning papers; the tocsin was sounded, at 6 o'clock on the evening of the 30th, a mob was regularly organized, with chairman and secretary, and resolved first that the press should be destroyed and the types thrown into the street, and secondly that Mr. Birney should be notified to * Narrative of the late Riotous Proceedings against the Liberty of the Press in Cincinnati, &c., page 35. 1837.] AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY. leave the city in twenty-four hours. A little after dark the work was commenced, the types were scattered, the press broken and thrown into the Ohio, and the office thoroughly pillaged. The mob then proceeded to the houses of Mr. Birney and others, but not finding their prey turned their fury upon the houses of some poor colored people. Here they met with resistance that somewhat cooled their zeal, and at length, at about midnight, they were dismissed by the worthy Mayor, with the following truly paternal speech:* "Gentlemen-It is now late at night, and time we were all in bed-by continuing longer, you will disturb the citizens, or deprive them of their rest, besides robbing yourselves of rest. No doubt, it is your intention to punish the guilty, and leave the innocent. But if you continue longer, you are in danger of punishing the innocent with the guilty, which I am convinced no one in Cincinnati would wish to do. We have done enough for one night. ["three cheers for the Mayor."] The abolitionists themselves, must be convinced by this time, what public sentiment is, and that it will not do any longer to disregard, or set it at nought. [three cheers again] As you cannot punish the guilty without endangering the innocent, I advise you all to go home. [Cries of home! home! from the crowd drowned the balance of his harangue.]" This mob, so dignified and distinguished in its leaders, was destined to be no less remarkable in its results. It multiplied Abolitionists in Ohio and throughout the free states; it enlarged the patronage of the Philanthropist, and gave it a more secure home in Cincinnati; and it stamped the seal of infamy and political reprobation upon all who were known as its instigators. The day was short in which they dared to glory in their deed, and it will never return.f * Reported by a gentleman present. † Mobocrats have frequently, during the year, felt the salutary operations of law. The following is a copy of a paper signed by five young men, who were the leaders in a mob in Washington, Pa., in June last, when Mr. Gould and the audience were violently assailed during lecture. They were indicted; and on the eve of trial they prepared a compromise, which was agreed to, the paper entered on record, and the nolle prosequi executed. Commonwealth, 】 VS. (COPY.) We, the undersigned, defendants in case, being now sensible of the gross impropriety of our conduct in the breach of the James Ruple, jr. peace, and in any and all the acts of violence which were perH. W. Sample, petrated towards the members of the Washington Anti-Slavery Joseph Dillow, Society, and the audience assembled at the Cumberland PresJas. O. Willson, byterian meeting-house, on the evening of the 21st of June last, thus publicly express our sorrow and regret, for any parWm. Sloan. ticipation which either of us may have had in the transactions on that occasion. We also hold as true, in every instance, that the laws of the land ought not, and cannot be violated with impunity. If the prosecution be withdrawn, we agree to repair all damages to the meeting-house, and pay the costs of prosecution. H. W. Sample, It would altogether transcend the limits of a report to notice the innumerable outrages of peace and good order which have been resorted to in the free states, to support the cause of slavery, and put down free discussion. But we will notice two most brutal assaults which have been committed upon Northern citizens at the South. How long will Northern men disgrace themselves by bootless violence in behalf of states in which even they could only travel at the peril of their lives? No northern man is safe at the South, against whom it is possible for the most jealous slaveholder to entertain a suspicion. Aaron W. Kitchell, a citizen of New-Jersey, of respectable connections, a graduate of Princeton college, and licentiate of the Theological Seminary, while travelling at the South, was brought before a meeting of the citizens of Hillsborough, Georgia, on the 8th of June, 1836. The proceedings, as given by a correspondent of the Newark Daily Advertiser, show the treatment he received. "Cuthbert Reese, Esq. was appointed Chairman, and Dr. A. T. Ridley, Secretary. Wm. Phillips, Esq. having stated the object of the meeting, a committee was sent for Dr. R. Thomas, who was said to be in possession of facts to confirm the intelligence that Kitchell had been holding communication with the black population. Dr. Thomas accordingly came forward, and confirmed the statements set forth in the letters. Kitchell was then taken and examined, and failing to give any satisfactory account of himself, on motion of Col. F. N. White, the following committee of twelve was appointed to report a course of proceeding, viz.: Isaac T. Moreland, Wm. Phillips, Wilkins Jackson, Dr. R. C. Clayton, Thomas J. Smith Col. White, Joseph C. White, Major Weekes, A. Alexander, John G. Morris, E. C. Butt, James Johnson, Esq. The Committee retired, and after deliberation made the following report, which was unanimously adopted, viz.: The Committee to whom was referred the case of the Rev. A. W. Kitchell, report-That upon examination, they find sundry certificates and other papers of a suspicious and spurious character, and have thought proper to retain the same in the hands of the secretary until further information is obtained concerning them. The Committee would advise that said Kitchell should be rode around the village on a rail, with a band of all kinds of music playing the Rogue's Marchthat his head should then be tarred and feathered, and again rode round the village as before-that he should also leave the state within ten days from this time, under the penalty of Lynch's Law. Upon motion, it was Resolved, That the proceedings of this meeting be published in the public gazettes of Milledgeville, with a request that they be republished in all papers opposed to the fiend-like purposes of Northern Abolitionists. CUTHBERT REESE, Chairman. Robert A. T. Ridley, Secretary." A further Committee was appointed, informally, I understand, to carry out the recommendation adopted by the meeting. Poor Kitchell was accordingly stripped, his head shaved, and a covering of tar and feathers substituted, and he carried about the town to the music of the Callithumpian band." The suspicion of abolitionism proved altogether false; otherwise, it is probable Mr. Kitchell would have atoned for his crime by the forfeit of his life. Three of the honorable citizens engaged in this outrage, Ira E. Dupree, H. H. Tarver, and Henry Bunn, have endeavored to vindicate their conduct by a public statement, in which they say-- "He was frequently heard of many miles from his place of abode, amongst the black population; and was, in one of his nocturnal and secret excursions, -with, no doubt, the fiendish intent to excite an insurrection,-discovered in the negro yard of a gentleman residing five miles from his residence, and actually refused to discover himself until CHASED DOWN BY DOGS." Mr. John Hopper, a respectable young merchant of NewYork, was attacked by a mob in the city of Savannah, on the suspicion of his being an Abolitionist. His private papers were searched, and preparations were made by a crowd of half-intoxicated, blaspheming ruffians, to put him to death. By almost a miracle, he was rescued by the civil authorities, and lodged in prison for safe keeping. Not the slightest evidence appearing that he was an Abolitionist, he was permitted by the Mayor to escape. To the mere lack of proof that he was what every citizen has both a moral and constitutional right to be, he doubtless owes his life. The Abolitionists defy the world to show that they have used any other than lawful, constitutional means; yet the bare suspicion of Abolitionism is a sufficient pretext in onehalf the country for rushing over the guaranties of the Constitution, and committing brutal outrage upon the unoffending citizens of the other half. It is slavery, and not the Constitution, which governs the United States at the present time. That it may more clearly be seen that it is the lash of the slave-driver which has reached over into the free states, to frighten the sons of pilgrim and revolutionary fathers out of their freedom of speech, and the preachers of the Gospel out of the tracks of Paul into those of Demas, let us trace the bloody instrument home, and see what it is doing there. Let us see whether the cases of Amos Dresser, Aaron W. Kitchell, and John Hopper, are any thing more than ordinary exhibitions of its doings in the land of its undisputed reign. The real character of plantation discipline, slaveholders are always anxious to conceal, yet the hardness of heart begotten by the fearful secrets cannot but reveal some of them. Said the Hon. B. Swain, of North Carolina, in 1830 "Let any man of spirit and feeling for a moment cast his thoughts over this land of slavery-think of the nakedness of some, the hungry yearnings of others, the flowing tears and heaving sighs of parting relations, the wailings and wo, the bloody cut of the keen lash, and the frightful scream that rends the very skies -and all this to gratify ambition, lust, pride, avarice, vanity, and other depraved feelings of the human heart. THE WORST IS NOT GENERALLY KNOWN. Were all the miseries, the horrors of slavery, to burst at once into view, a peal of seven-fold thunder could scarce strike greater alarm." Yet, strong as are the motives, and abundant as is the opportunity for concealment, outrage enough to justify the interference of all mankind might be proved from the testimony of the southern papers of the past year themselves. We give from some of them, and other credible sources, the following CHAPTER OF ABOMINATIONS. Flogging to Death.-A negro, the property of Mr. John Skinner, of Society Hill, S. C., was flogged by his overseer, one Bill Schenck, on the 25th ult., in such a severe manner, that he died the same evening. Schenck was examined before a justice, and discharged.-Southern paper. To the Editors of the Constitutionalist: AIKEN, So. Ca., Dec. 20, 1836. I have just returned from an inquest I held over the dead body of a negro man, a runaway, that was shot near the South Edisto, in this District, (Barnwell,) on Saturday morning last. He came to his death by his own recklessness. He refused to be taken alive; and said that other attempts to take him had been made, and he was determined that he would not be taken. When taken, he was nearly naked-had a large dirk or knife, and a heavy club. He was, at first, (when those who were in pursuit of him found it absolutely necessary,) shot at with small-shot, with the intention of merely crippling him. He was shot at several times, and at last he was so disabled as to be compelled to surrender. He kept in the run of a creek in a very dense swamp all the time that the neighbors were in pursuit of him. As soon as the negro was taken, the best medical aid was procured, but he died on the same evening. One of the witnesses at the inquisition stated, that the negro boy said that he was from Mississippi, and belonged to so many persons he did not know who his master was: but again he said his master's name was Brown. He said his own name was Sam; and when asked by another witness who his master was, he muttered something like Augusta or Augustine. The boy was apparently above 35 or 40 years of ageabout six feet high-slightly yellow in the face-very long beard or whiskersand very stout built, and a stern countenance; and appeared to have been run away a long time. WILLIAM H. PRITCHARD, Coroner, (ex officio,) Barnwell Dist., S. C. The Mississippi and other papers will please copy the above."-Georgia Constitutionalist. Voluntary Death.-A colored man, acting as steward on board the Selma, was drowned at New Orleans, about a fortnight since, under the following peculiar circumstances: The negro, it seems, was a runaway slave, who had by some means obtained a set of free papers, and under the character of a freeman had been employed on several boats, but lastly on the Selma. Yesterday, the owner detected him on the boat, and seized hold of him to prevent his escape; but the negro, after a desperate struggle, succeeded in disengaging himself, and running to the wheel house, jumped down into the water, where it is believed he voluntarily drowned himself. |