Description
"The Kansas Narrative of John Doy of Lawrence, Kansas - A Plain, Unvarnished Tale" - - (Researcher's note: Due to the numerous references to Platte County, only selected excerpts have been indexed.)
Chapter XVI The Jail at St. Joseph - Further Incidents of The Slave-Trade, p. 94-96 - - The next day a slave trader, named Wright, of whom more hereafter, came to the jail, and going into the lock-up, ordered Charley to strip, and when he had done so, noted all his marks, scars, etc., in his memorandum book, as usual, and then asked Charley if he was well, adding: “I’ll flog you if you don’t tell me the truth.” Charley, apparently with reluctance, answered that he sometimes had the rheumatism.
The trader left, and on the morning after, Hutchinson, who professed to own him, came and took Charley out into the jail-yard, with the words, “D—n you; you’ve got the rheumatism, have you ? Now I’m going to cure you.”
Poor Charley said: “Mr. Wright told me that he’d flog me if I didn’t tell the truth, and now you are going to flog me because I did.”
Hutchinson brought a chair out of the jailer’s house, laid it on the ground on its back, and made Charley strip naked and lie face downwards on the chair, with his hands hold of the top. Then, with two pieces of tin, about sixteen inches long, fastened together at one end, which was rounded into a handle, he gave him 20 terrific blows on the back with all his might, Charley shrieking all the time and the bloated beast crying out: “Are you well now? Do you know me now?”
Stopping to breathe and to rest, Hutchinson detailed to 4 or 5 men standing by, all the trouble he had had at Leavenworth, where Charley did not or would not know him, and afterwards gave him 10 strokes more, when Charley shrieked: “Oh! I do know you, Master. Oh! don’t kill me by inches!”
But he kept striking and Charley shrieking, till the prisoners in the room where I was, who were looking out of the grated window, called to him: “Why not shoot the man at once, instead of murdering him in that way?”
Hutchinson looked up at the window and said: “If I had that sweet-scented” (which seemed to be a favorite word of his) “old Doy down here, I’d serve him out worse than this,” and continued to beat his victim deliberately, until I counted 50 strokes. The men below said that the blood was oozing out of the pores of the poor fellow’s skin.
Poor Charley, in a condition that can be better imagined than described, was then taken in, dressed, and the next day sold and carried off down South, never to see his wife and child again.
(Researcher's note: In January 1859 abolitionist John Doy agreed to take a group of 13 African American Kansans north to Iowa on one leg of the Underground Railroad. Dr. Doy and his group were then captured 12 miles north of Lawrence by a group of Missouri slave hunters which included Weston Mayor Benjamin Wood. Doy and his 21 year old son, Charles, were transported back to Weston, Missouri and placed in jail. He was later transferred to the Platte City jail and then to the St. Joseph, Missouri, jail. Along the way they were displayed in the streets and hounded, beaten and nearly hanged. He was charged with a federal offense of "slave stealing” and awaited a sentence of hard labor or death. In jail after a second trial that found him guilty, ten men went from Lawrence to St. Joseph in July 1859 and broke Doy out of jail. He returned to Kansas and later wrote a 137-page narrative describing in detail his experiences in Platte County, Missouri.)Date(s) of Creation
1/1/1860
