Alexandria Gazette

The Cast of Auburns

The recent horrible tragedy at Richmond, is of a nature to call for more than a passing notice at the hands of the Southern press.- It was a tragedy, indeed, of low life. and the unhappy victim of the wretch who afterwards destroyed himself, was a negro slave. The circumstances, abhorrent enough in themselves, were yet not more singular, or atrocious than those attending other murders of which we have read, or that have occurred within our recollection in the same city. But we feel bound to regard the fiendish crime as one of greater importance to Southern society than any that has recently transpired, because it grew out of the interference, on the part of the Northern people, which has for years been systematically pursued, with the question of negro slavery. It is one of the legitimate fruits of a wholesale plan of robbery, carried on under the guise of benevolence, by Northern abolitionists, and we desire to notice it in this point of view, wherein it seems to us to assume a magnitude it might not otherwise present.

There can be little doubt that the murderer, Auburne or Arbourine, or whatever else may be his name, was an agent sent to the South for the purpose of seducing negro slaves to escape from servitude, and that the house rented by him, under the pretext of being designed for a restaurant, was really to serve as a rendezvous for runaways, where they might be secreted, until an opportunity for escape was presented. The whole plan was revealed some years since, in the case of Blevins, who is now confined in the State Penitentiary. The evidence upon his trial went to show that certain pious and tender-hearted spinsters and strong minded women of Worcester, Massachusetts, were regularly associated together to affect the abduction of negro slaves, and that Blevins was paid so much per capita, for all he could succeed in sending off. We cannot doubt that among these philanthropists, there were some who thought they were doing God service in this negro stealing conspiracy. And there may be others who, at this moment, are engaged in the same work, of a similar conviction.- And yet we ask them to look at the results of their intermeddling (to call it by no harsher name,) as exhibited last week in Richmond. Here is a negro who leaves a kind and indulgent master, and commits himself to the protection of a stranger who next day poisons him! And can any one say that Carter was the first victim of the fiendish malevolence of these miscreants? How many other negroes may not have been murdered under circumstances of equal atrocity? We all remember the narrow escape of the negroes whom Red Boot Smith, attempted to get off by Adams & Co.'s Express, five years ago, and who for a considerable time were kept standing on their heads in a box. Of those, who having successfully escaped to the Free States, afterwards fell an easy prey to the rigors of an inhospitable climate, or died by starvation. the number exceeds all computation. Now we gravely submit the question to all reasonable men at the North, which of us are the real friends of the negro; we who maintain them under the system of servitude in comfort and plenty, or you who employ villains to steal them dead or alive, and carry them off to die by penury and cold?-Petersburg Express.