The famous sentence(1) passed upon Slater for the murder of his own slave, gave to the name of Judge Wilds a world-wide celebrity. It made a deep impression, not only in this country, but in England. It appeared soon after its delivery, or portions of it, in the books of oratory of the day; and as Judge O'Neall justly remarks, "is a beautiful and eloquent specimen of his powers." It was in these words: --
"John Slater! You have been convicted by a jury of your country for the willful murder of your own slave; and I am sorry to say, the short, impressive, uncontradicted testimony, on which that conviction was founded, leaves but too little room to doubt its propriety.
"The annals of human depravity might be safely challenged for parallel to this unfeeling, bloody, and diabolical transaction.
"You caused your unoffending, unresisting slave, to be bound hand and foot, and by a refinement of cruelty, compelled his companion, perhaps the friend of his heart, to chop his head with an axe, and to cast his body, yet convulsing with the agonies of death, into the water! And this deed you dared to perpetrate in the very harbor of Charleston, within a few yards of the shore, unblushingly, in the face of open day. Had your murderous arm been raised against your equal, whom the laws of self-defense and the more efficacious laws of the land unite to protect, your crime would not had been without precedent and would have seemed less horrid. Your personal risk would at least have proved, that though a murderer you were not a coward. But you too well knew that this unfortunate man, whom chance had subjected to your caprices, had not, like yourself, chartered to him by the laws of the land the same rights of nature; and that a stern but necessary policy had disarmed him of the rights of self-defense. Too well you knew that to you alone he could look for protection, and that your arm alone could shield him from oppression or avenge his wrongs; yet that arm you cruelty stretched out for his destruction.
"The counsel who generously volunteered his services in your behalf, shocked at the enormity of your offense, endeavored to find a refuge, as well for his own feelings as for those of all who heard your trial, in a derangement of your intellect. Several witnesses were examined to establish this fact; but the result of their testimony, it is apprehended, was as little satisfactory to his mind as to those of the jury to whom it was addressed. I sincerely wish this defense had proved successful; not from any desire to save you from the punishment which awaits you, and which you so richly merit, but from the desire of saving my country from the foul reproach of having, in its bosom, so great a monster.
"From the peculiar situation of this country, our fathers felt themselves justified in subjecting to a very slight punishment him who murders a slave. Whether the present state of society requires a continuation of this policy, so opposite to the apparent rights of humanity, it remains for a subsequent Legislature to decide. Their attention ere this would have been directed to this subject, but, for the honor of human nature, had hardened sinners as yourself are rarely found to disturb the repose of society. The grand jury of this county, deeply impressed with your daring outrages against the laws of both God and man, had made a very strong expression of their feelings on the subject to the Legislature, and from the wisdom and justice of that body, the friends of humanity may confidently hope to see this blackest in the catalogue of human crimes pursued by appropriate punishment.(2)
"In proceeding to pass the sentence which the law provides for your offence, I confess I never felt more forcibly the want of power to make respected the laws of my country, whose minister I am.
"You have already violated the majesty of those laws. You have properly pleaded the local law, under which you stand convicted, as a justification of your crime. You have held that law in one hand and brandished your axe in the other, impiously contending that the one gave a license to the unrestrained use of the other.
"But though you will go off unhurt in person, by the present sentence, expect not to escape with impunity. Your bloody deed has set a mark upon you which I fear the good actions of your future life will not efface. You will be held in abhorrence by an impartial world, and shunned as a monster by every honest man. Your unoffending posterity will be visited for your iniquity, by the stigma of deriving their origin from an unfeeling murderer. Your days, which will be but few, will be spent in wretchedness, and if your conscience be not steeled against every virtuous emotion - if you be not entirely abandoned to hardness of heart - the mangled, mutilated corpse of your murdered slave will ever be present in your imagination, obtrude itself into all your amusements, and haunt you in the hours of silence and repose.
"But, should you disregard the reproaches of an offended world - should you hear with callous insensibility the gnawing of a guilty conscience - yet remember that an awful period is fast approaching, and with you it is close at hand, when you must appear before a tribunal whose want of power can afford you no prospect of impunity -- when you must raise your bloody hands at the bar of and impartial, omniscient Judge.
"Remember, I pray you remember, whilst you yet have time, that God is just, and that His vengeance will not sleep for ever."
An occasion like this called for the peculiar powers of Judge Wilds, touching, as it did, the tender sensibilities and stirring up the emotional depths of his nature. The sympathies of the man were not swallowed up in the stern sense of duty in the upright Judge. It was here that he appeared good as he was great.
The History of the Old Cheraws: containing An Account of the Aborigines of the Pedee, the First White Settlements, Their Subsequent Progess, Civil Changes, The Struggle of the Revolution, And Growth of the Country Afterward; Extending From About A.D. 1730 to 1810, With Notices of Families and Sketches of Individuals,
by the Right Rev. Alexander Gregg, D.D.,
New York: Richardson and Company, 1867,
pp.510-513
1. It is not a little singular that this production is not to be found the newspapers of Charleston of the time. The Author, at least, after a diligent search, failed to find it, or any allusion to it, in the files of newspapers in the Charleston Library. It was found by Judge O'Neall in the "Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin," after a vain search elsewhere.
2. Judge O'Neall adds the following note (see his "Bench and Bar of S. C. " vol. 1, p. 104):-"The punishment under the Act of 1740, §38, under which Slater was convicted and sentenced, was a fine of £700, currency - equal to £100 Sterling - which, at 4s. 8 d. to the dollar, is $428, 57-100 - and incapacity to enjoy or receive the profits of any office, place, or employment, civil or military, and if unable to pay this fine, then imprisonment for seven years. The Act of 1821 changed this when punishment for what Judge Wilds justly called 'the blackest in the catalogue of human crimes,' to death" His eloquent tongue had been silent in death nearly eleven years, when the "wisdom and justice" of the Legislature yielded to the "hopes" of the "friends of humanity." "At my instance," continues the judge, "my friend Daniel HorlBeck, Esq., caused the records to be examined, to ascertain when the above sentence was pronounced, and strange to say, nothing can be found. There is no Sessions docket or journal, until 1833, now extant. No indictment against Slater can be found. I presume the sentence was pronounced in 1807." This is confirmatory of the fact stated in the preceding note, the sentence was not published in the city papers of the time.
