]
[Footnote 2: "Record of the Proceedings of the Inferior Court of Baldwin
County on the Trials of Slaves charged with capital Offences." MS. in the
court house at Milledgeville. The record is summarized in Ac American
Historical Association _Report_ for 1903, I, 462-464, and in _Plantation
and Frontier_, II, 123-125.]
A few negro felonies, indeed, resulted directly from the pressure of slave
circumstance. A gruesome instance occurred in 1864 in the same county as
the foregoing. A young slave woman, Becky by name, had given pregnancy
as the reason for a continued slackness in her work. Her master became
skeptical and gave notice that she was to be examined and might expect the
whip in case her excuse were not substantiated. Two days afterward a negro
midwife announced that Becky's baby had been born; but at the same time
a neighboring planter began search for a child nine months old which was
missing from his quarter. This child was found in Becky's cabin, with its
two teeth pulled and the tip of its navel cut off. It died; and Becky,
charged with murder but convicted only of manslaughter, was sentenced to
receive two hundred lashes in instalments of twenty-five at intervals of
four days.
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