Description
Beautiful Workings of American Slavery - - Dear Herald: Would you like a little gossip served up for your readers. Dainty tit-bits? Nay, ‘tis coarse, repulsive, the dish I shall set before them.
On Friday last, the particulars of a fiendish murder in this city leaked out, and became noised around town. These are the particulars of the “painful circumstance" as the Journal of this place calls it:
Several days ago a young negro girl, about 16 years old, “belonging" to a Mrs. Wash (Mary J. Wash nee' Bryan), of this city (St. Joseph), was missed, and Mrs. Wash was terribly exercised thereat, and raised a tremendous excitement, declaring the said chattel had run off, or been stolen by the abolitionists; and immediately officers were started on the track to find the said runaway human property. On Friday she was found, but in a place least thought of by those in pursuit. In fact, I believe she was found by accident by those not on the "hunt.”
It appears that Mrs. Wash is a woman of not very amiable disposition, and does not follow the golden rule in the treatment of her slaves, as the sequel will show.
Instead of the girl fleeing from inhuman persecutions, or being spirited away by some abolitionist, the ghost of which forever haunts some people, it appears that her mistress terminated, several days ago, a series of revolting cruelties which might almost put to blush the bloody Spanish inquisition.
For month after month have the people living within hearing distance of Mrs. Wash, had their ears pierced by shrieks and groans proceeding from her premises, the result of tortures she was inflicting upon this slave.
But they have terminated. The last blow has been struck; the last shriek penetrated the gates of heaven; the last prayer of the poor black girl been registered. Death put an end to the cruelties. The last beating Mrs. Wash gave her she used sticks of wood, and anything she could lay her hands on, and called in the aid of a hired man, and the two together freed the spirit from the tortured body.
Then there was a burial—a secret burial—in which the woman monster and her hired man minion scooped out an uncouth grave, and into it laid their victim. The earth hiding her from human gaze, the story was that she had run off, maybe aided by abolition hands, and what an excitement was created! How eagerly persons started in pursuit! But the pursuers found her not. She was found, however, and taken out of her grace a day or two after being buried, and her head was found to be bruised almost to a jelly. She was a horrid sight.
But let her rest. Another victim to American Slavery has gone to heaven’s court as a witness.
The female murderer is a sister of Wright (Francis Marion Wright) the negro trader, who was shot, some time since, by a slave whom he had bought and was about taking South.
I would make a comparison or two. Dr. Doy was accused of aiding negroes to their freedom, and what a howl went forth from slavery’s den. Its minions were at work, its money offered, its hounds let loose, thirsting for his blood. Mrs. Wash kills one with sticks of wood and other missiles—she takes a life she cannot restore, and calls in the aid of a hired man to aid her in her fiendish work and it is treated as a “painful circumstance” - people “regret” it, but that is all.
A negro is bought by a trafficker in human bodies - a man without heart or soul, who makes a living off from the tears and groans of others - to be sold far South, to be separated from his family, and he, agonized at the thought, kills the white fiend; does just as all of us would do under like circumstances, and people turn out by dozens to catch him, and threats are made to burn him alive if they catch him.
Mrs. Wash brutally kills her servant girl without cause, and people stop a moment, maybe say “too bad,” and that is the last of it.
Look at it rightly. The negro killed his master to keep from being separated from his family. Mrs. Wash killed her negro servant in a freak of passion.
The first is guilty of an offence that calls for tortures dire; the second - what? The first is black; the second white; herein lies the difference.
I clip the following advertisement from the West (The Weekly West, St. Joseph, MO):
50 NEGROES WANTED! - - We want to buy Fifty young Negroes between the ages of 10 and 25 years - men, women, boys and girls - for which we will pay the highest price in cash. MILTON H. WASH, WM. M. CARTER.
The person represented by the first signature is the husband of her who murdered her negro. Wonder if he wants some more victims for her thirst for blood?
Another page in the volume of American Slavery. Let us close the book. OBSERVER.
(Researcher's note: Slave traders Milton H. Wash and F. M. (Francis M.) Wright were enslavers that operated in Platte County, Missouri. Milton H. Wash was the Buchanan County Clerk, Assessor, and City Register.)Date(s) of Creation
10/1/1859
