In March, 1844, the Captain-General, O'Donnell, addressed a letter to General Salas, who was the head of the military tribunal, in which he counseled drastic and violent measures against any insurgent blacks. He suggested that all blacks, slave or free, who were suspected of treason to their masters, should be apprehended, and if they refused to give information as to the extent of the organization and their associations, the knowledge must be wrung from them by torture. The slaves were to be tried in the district where they were taken. The officer in charge of each district was promptly given full power to apprehend and punish the plotters as he saw fit. The Spanish officers were often cruel and brutal men, who exercised their authority in the most revolting manner. The hue and cry went from hut to cabin and no black man was safe at his own hearth. Opportunity was taken in some cases to work out a personal grudge and gain freedom from an enemy. No one, not even a white man, dared publicly to raise his voice to expostulate, for he was promptly dubbed an abolitionist and thrown into prison. If a negro had a little money saved to buy his freedom, or, if he was a freedman, to obtain a little business, he stood a better chance of his life. He might buy his tormentors off, but all too frequently when he had paid, he was murdered lest he might tell of the man whom he had bribed. One tender hearted Spanish judge, Don Ramon Gonzales, is reported to have condemned his victims to be taken to a room, the walls of which were already dripping with the blood and shredded flesh of previous victims. There they were tied head down to a ladder, and flogged by two Africans until they were dead. To make their torture the more excruciating, the thongs with which they were scourged had on the ends small buttons made of fine wire, which bit into the flesh. When several freedmen had been executed in this pleasant fashion, and when public opinion dared feebly to protest at such atrocities, death certificates were made out by unscrupulous physicians, reporting death from some simple disease, and under this authority the murdered negroes were quickly buried. A second kind judge seized on some pretext a freeborn negro, an old man, who was gentle and inoffensive, but who had incurred the judicial displeasure, and had him tied to the ladder and flogged on three separate occasions, without even going to the trouble to bring an indictment against him or divulge the nature of his offense. Another free negro was taken by this same official, hung by his hands from the ceiling of the torture chamber, and left there all night, while he was at intervals whipped. At length this poor victim succumbed to the treatment and gave information of a comrade, who was promptly taken out and shot without a trial.