[52] About 1858 certain
bandits in western Louisiana abducted two slaves from the home of the Widow
Bernard on Bayou Vermilion. After the lapse of several months they were
discovered in the possession of one Apcher, who was tried for the theft
but acquitted. The slaves when restored to their mistress were put in the
kitchen, bound together by their hands. But while the family was at dinner
the two ran from the house and drowned themselves in the bayou. The
narrator of the episode attributed the impulse for suicide to the taste for
vagabondage and the hatred for work which the negroes had acquired from the
bandit.[53]
[Footnote 48: For the effect of epidemics _see_ above, pp. 300, 301.]
[Footnote 49: _South Carolina Gazette_, Feb. 12 to 19, 1741.]
[Footnote 50: _Carolina Gazette_ (Charleston), Feb. 4, 1798, supplement.]
[Footnote 51: _Louisiana Courier_, Mch. 3, 1828.]
[Footnote 52: J.W. DuBose, _Life of W.L. Yancey_ (Birmingham, Ala., 1892),
p. 39.]
[Footnote 53: Alexandra Barbe, _Histoire des Comites de Vigilance aux
Attakapas_] (Louisiana, 1861), pp. 182-185.
The governor of South Carolina reported the convictions of five white
men for the crime of slave stealing in the one year;[54] and in the
penitentiary lists of the several states the designation of slave stealers
was fairly frequent, in spite of the fact that the death penalty was
generally prescribed for the crime.
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