Fowle's New Hampshire Gazette And General Advertiser

By the Dominica papers it appears, that the runaway negroes have assembled on that island in great numbers, under the direction of several leaders, of whom the principal is named Baila. They are all completely furnished with fire arms, and, in some accounts, are stated as 200; but in others only 100. On the 6th of December, they proceeded to the Rosaly estate, where they shot the manager, a Mr. Gamble, two overseers, Messrs. Harton and Lisle, and a carpenter, named Armstrong. Several negroes belonging to the estate, were also sacrificed by them. Afterwards, having plundered the manager's house, they set it on fire, and burned him in it, lying on his bed, with the wounds he had received. They committed several other outrages. But there is the greatest reason to believe they have been reduced by the military force of the island, which was dispatched in pursuit of them.

However shocked we must feel at the recital of the enormities perpetrated by the negroes in Dominica, on the unfortunate settlers there, candor and impartiality must confess, that the severities and cruelties exercised by many white people on those creatures are of equal weight in the scale of reason and common sense. Ferocious, easily inflamed with passions, among which, perhaps, the most predominant and characteristic is revenge, it cannot excite much surprise, that a repetition of such treatment should drive those ill-fated beings to madness. The declaration of one of the chiefs, Congoree, that the manager of the Rosaly estate had killed his son—and that he had dispatched him for it --is a convincing proof, that a spirit of retaliation actuates them. The discrimination they make between the French and English clearly shews, that their steps are not marked by wanton and undistinguishing fury --but that revenge for oppression is their grand stimulus.