The
magistrates were less impulsive. They promptly organized a court comprising
all the justices of the peace in the county and assigned attorneys for
the defense of the prisoners while the public prosecutor performed his
appointed task. Forty-seven negroes all told were brought before the court.
As to the five free blacks included in this number the magistrates, who had
only preliminary jurisdiction in their cases, discharged one and remanded
four for trial by a higher court. Of the slaves four, and perhaps a fifth
regarding whom the record is blank, were discharged without trial, and
thirteen more were acquitted. Of those convicted seven were sentenced to
deportation, and seventeen with the ringleader among them, to death by
hanging. In addition there were several slaves convicted of complicity in
neighboring counties.[76]
[Footnote 76: W.S. Drewry, _Slave Insurrections in Virginia, 1830-1865_
(Washington, 1900), recounts this revolt in great detail, and gives a
bibliography. The vouchers in the Virginia archives record only eleven
executions and four deportations of Southampton slaves in this period. It
may be that the rest of those convicted were pardoned.
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