county, Maryland, when I left there; and if he is still alive, he very
probably lives there now; and if so, he is now, as he was then, as
highly esteemed and as much respected as though his guilty soul had not
been stained with his brother's blood.

I speak advisedly when I say this,--that killing a slave, or any colored
person, in Talbot county, Maryland, is not treated as a crime, either by
the courts or the community. Mr. Thomas Lanman, of St. Michael's, killed
two slaves, one of whom he killed with a hatchet, by knocking his brains
out. He used to boast of the commission of the awful and bloody deed. I
have heard him do so laughingly, saying, among other things, that he was
the only benefactor of his country in the company, and that when others
would do as much as he had done, we should be relieved of "the d----d
niggers."

The wife of Mr. Giles Hicks, living but a short distance from where I
used to live, murdered my wife's cousin, a young girl between fifteen
and sixteen years of age, mangling her person in the most horrible
manner, breaking her nose and breastbone with a stick, so that the poor
girl expired in a few hours afterward. She was immediately buried, but
had not been in her untimely grave but a few hours before she was taken
up and examined by the coroner, who decided that she had come to her
death by severe beating. The offence for which this girl was thus
murdered was this:--She had been set that night to mind Mrs. Hicks's
baby, and during the night she fell asleep, and the baby cried. She,
having lost her rest for several nights previous, did not hear the
crying. They were both in the room with Mrs. Hicks. Mrs. Hicks, finding
the girl slow to move, jumped from her bed, seized an oak stick of wood
by the fireplace, and with it broke the girl's nose and breastbone,
and thus ended her life. I will not say that this most horrid murder