The Shasta Courier

A Revolting Story of Inhumanity.

In February last, Abram Jenkins, a Justice of the Peace, and George H. Mitchell, took a girl named Phillis Rufflin from a school house near Harmon's Cross Roads in North Carolina, and conveyed her to a piece of woods where they inflicted one hundred and twenty-six lashes upon her. They were tried before a military court at Plymouth, N. C., in June, and sentenced, Jenkins to hard labor for one month and fined twenty dollars, Mitchell to hard labor for three months and fined seventy-five dollars. General Sickles, in approving the sentence, says:

'It appears that the daughter of one of the prisoners, having attempted to beat a young colored girl, met with resistance, which became successful; and resulted in the chastisement of the white by the black. This unlooked-for reversal of a long accustomed relation filled the neighborhood with consternation and rage. Couriers passed to and fro from farm to farm, inflaming the temper of the people, and concerting measures to produce terror among the negroes. A meeting of citizens was convened at a school house near the residence of the parties. The accused was among those assembled. The magistrate Jenkins was invited to lend the sanction of his presence, and did so. Phillis, the young freed woman, was sent for. Dragged before this self-constituted conclave of angry men, whom she had been accustomed from infancy to call masters, some of whom she now heard urging her incarceration, while one swore she would be hung, and all agreed that she must be imprisoned or whipped, the frightened girl exclaimed that she would be rather whipped than go to jail. This was taken as the expression of the assent, which they desired. Some sort of writing was drawn up, called an indenture, by which Phillis, having signed it, was made to bind herself as an apprentice to one Mrs. Harmon, who thereupon consented that her so-called ward should be flogged.'

Quite enough was thought to have been accorded to the mockery of legal formality, and the impatient assemblage, consisting of all the prisoners who have been convicted, except the magistrate, hastened to execute the penalty awarded. Phillis was conducted into an adjacent wood, where, at a spot some sixty yards remote from any road, she was halted and told to take down her dress, she not obeying with alacrity, one of the prisoners snatched it off her shoulders. Stripped to her waist, except of her chemise, she was then whipped by five of these men in succession, by whom, according to the testimony of one of them, one hundred and twenty-six lashes were inflicted upon her half naked body, with rods three feet long and one-half to three-eighths of an inch thick. Her garment was cut through and through; blood ran from the wales raised on her lacerated back; one gash in her flesh, three days after, showed four inches in length; the heavy blows fell upon her person at random; she was pushed; she was pulled; she was kicked in the abdomen; till at last it seems that one of the accused, an applauding bystander, not utterly insensible to the sufferings and age of the wretched victim, was so far touched by the spectacle of her torture that the cry was wrung from him, 'Boys, don't hurt her breast!'

Having satiated their savage vengeance, her tormentors, fatigued by their exertions, withdrew; not, however, without considering the proposal of one of their number to return and give her ten more lashes each, to stop her screaming. Finally, the poor child, wounded and groaning, was permitted to make her way to the house of her mistress, where for days she suffered, scarcely able to crawl to her unremitted task, or even to wear her clothes without pain. In the revolting crime thus briefly outlined, all of these prisoners are shown to be eager participants. In the interest of outraged justice, it is to be deplored that the perpetrators have been adjudged to undergo punishments so inadequate to the enormity of the offense.