The Rising Son; or, the Antecedents and Advancement of the Colored RaceBrown, William Wells
History
The Rising Son; or, the Antecedents and Advancement of the Colored Race
Brown, William Wells
African Americans -- Biography; African Americans -- History; Black race; Slavery -- United States
“By this time, my company amounted to fifteen, nine men mounted, who
started for Mrs. Whitehead’s, (the other six were to go through a
by-way to Mr. Bryant’s, and rejoin us at Mrs. Whitehead’s).
“As we approached the house, we discovered Mr. Richard Whitehead
standing in the cotton patch, near the lane fence; we called him over
into the lane, and Will, the executioner, was near at hand, with his
fatal axe, to send him to an untimely grave. As we pushed on to the
house, I discovered some one running around the garden, and thinking it
was some of the white family, I pursued; but finding it was a servant
girl belonging to the house, I returned to commence the work of death;
but they whom I left had not been idle; all the family were already
murdered but Mrs. Whitehead and her daughter Margaret. As I came round
to the door, I saw Will pulling Mrs. Whitehead out of the house, and at
the step he nearly severed her head from her body with his broadaxe.
Miss Margaret, when I discovered her, had concealed herself in the
corner formed by the projection of the cellar cap from the house; on
my approach she fled, but was soon overtaken, and after repeated blows
with a sword, I killed her with a blow over the head with a fence rail.
By this time the six who had gone by Mr. Bryant’s rejoined us, and
informed me they had done the work of death assigned them.
“We again divided, part going to Mr. Richard Porter’s, and from thence
to Nathaniel Francis’s, the others to Mr. Howell Harris’s and Mr.
T. Doyles’s. On my reaching Mr. Porter’s, he had escaped with his
family. I understood there that the alarm had already spread, and I
immediately returned to bring up those sent to Mr. Doyles’s and Mr.
Howell Harris’s; the party I left going on to Mr. Francis’s, having
told them I would join them in that neighborhood. I met those sent to
Mr. Doyles’s and Mr. Howell Harris’s returning, having met Mr. Doyles
on the road and killed him.
“Learning from some who joined them that Mr. Harris was from home, I
immediately pursued the course taken by the party gone on before; but
knowing that they would complete the work of death and pillage at Mr.
Francis’s before I could get there, I went to Mr. Peter Edwards’s,
expecting to find them there; but they had been there already. I then
went to Mr. John T. Barrows’s; they had been there and murdered him. I
pursued on their track to Captain Newitt Harris’s. I found the greater
part mounted and ready to start; the men, now amounting to about forty,
shouted and hurrahed as I rode up; some were in the yard loading their
guns, others drinking. They said Captain Harris and his family had
escaped; the property in the house they destroyed, robbing him of money
and other valuables.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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