Memphis Daily Appeal CS
Negro Burned to Death--Rape and Murder of a Child.
From the Memphis Bulletin.]
We learn by a passenger on the steamboat Saline, who was engaged in the search for and present at the finding of the murdered body mentioned below, the following details, rarely equalled in horror and atrocity. Mrs. Bradley is a widow, residing at the foot of "Clarke's Towhead," near Walnut Bend, in Phillips county, Arkansas. She had one child, a sweet, pleasing girl of nine years of age. On Wednesday afternoon last she heard the child calling to her in an alarmed voice, and hastening to the door, saw a movement among the bushes at some distance off, whence the screams and cries issued. It was some little time before aid could be procured and a search made, but it become evident that the child had been carried off, and investigation showed that the guilty party was a negro youth of nineteen years of age, a slave of Mr. John Ashley, living in the same neighborhood. Next day the negro was found, but he utterly refused to tell what he had done with the child. Whipping and other punishment could only get from him an acknowledgment that he had left the little girl in the woods, where or in what condition be declared again and again no power on earth should compel him to tell. On Thursday and Friday the search was continued. The negro was taken along and chastised at intervals, but he still persisted in his refusal to make any revelation. On Saturday the party again taking the negro with them, resumed their search. While so engaged they met a band of guerrillas to whom they revealed the particulars of the loss of the unfortunate child.
The guerrillas was fired with indignation and swore vengeance to the utmost extreme against the negro. They bound him to a tree and proceeded to pile wood around him. When the boy found that death was near he told them the child was dead, he had violated and killed her, and her body lay in a certain spot they had several times passed in the search. It was between two cottonwood trees and covered thickly over with brush. This revelation made, the woods were fired and the negro was burned to death. The body of the little girl was found at the spot indicated. It presented a horrible appearance. There was a wound on the forehead apparently from a blow. On the arms and various parts of the body were dark bruises showing where the negro had violently held her in her vain struggles against his hellish attempts. Dark marks on her throat, showed that she had been put to death by choking. The condition of her person we cannot state on paper; all that fiends could imagine a barbarity, cruelty, and hellish villainy were apparent there. The excitement in the neighborhood is extreme, and the fate of the negro is pronounced to be only just.