Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

Book Excerpt: ...instances of murderous cruelty --in one of which a planter deliberately shot a slave belonging to a neighboring plantation who had unintentionally gotten within his lordly domain in quest of fish; and in the other an overseer blew out the brains of a slave who had fled to a stream of water to escape a bloody scourging. Mr. DOUGLASS states that in neither of these instances was any thing done by way of legal arrest or judicial investigation. The Baltimore American of March 17 1845 relates a similar case of atrocity perpetrated with similar impunity--as follows: --_Shooting a slave._--We learn upon the authority of a letter from Charles county Maryland received by a gentleman of this city that a young man named Matthews a nephew of General Matthews and whose father it is believed holds an office at Washington killed one of the slaves upon his fathers farm by shooting him. The letter states that young Matthews had been left in charge of the farm; that he gave an order to the servant.