The statistics of rape in Virginia, and the Georgia cases already given,
refute the oft-asserted Southern tradition that negroes never violated
white women before slavery was abolished. Other scattering examples may be
drawn from contemporary newspapers. One of these occurred at Worcester,
Massachusetts in 1768.[10] Upon conviction the negro was condemned to
death, although a white man at the same time found guilty of an attempt at
rape was sentenced merely to sit upon the gallows. In Georgia the governor
issued a proclamation in 1811 offering reward for the capture of Jess, a
slave who had ravished the wife of a citizen of Jones County;[11] and in
1844 a jury in Habersham County, after testimony by the victim and others,
found a slave named Dave guilty of rape upon Hester An Dobbs, "a free white
female in the peace of God and state of Georgia," and the criminal was duly
hanged by the sheriff.[12] In Alabama in 1827 a negro was convicted of rape
at Tuscaloosa,[13] and another in Washington County confessed after capture
that while a runaway he had met Miss Winnie Caller, taken her from her
horse, dragged her into the woods and butchered her "with circumstances
too horrible to relate";[14] and at Mobile in 1849 a slave named Ben was
sentenced to death for an attempt at rape upon a white woman.
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