s a saturnalia of blood. What he did was to summon
the savage Maroon tribes to the feast of death, that by their barbaric
warfare they might add yet one more shade of gloom to the picture. The
official accounts are enough to blanch the cheek with horror. In two
days after the riot martial law was declared. In four, the outbreak was
hemmed into narrow quarters. In a week, it ceased to exist in any shape.
Yet the work of death went on. Bands of maddened soldiers pierced the
country in every direction. Men were arrested upon the slightest
suspicion. Every petty officer constituted himself a judge; every
private soldier became an executioner. If the black man fled, he was
shot as a rebel; if he surrendered, he was hung on the same pretext,
after the most summary trial. If the number of prisoners became
inconveniently large, they were shot, or else whipped and let go,
apparently according to the whim of the officer in command. Women were
seized, stripped half naked, and thrown among the vulgar soldiery to be
scourged. The estimate is that five hundred and fifty were hung by order
of drum-head court-martials, five hundred destroyed by the Maroons, two
thousand shot by the soldiery, and that three hundred women were catted,
and how many men nobody presumes even to guess. One asks, At what
expense of life to the victors was all this slaughter accomplished? And
he reads, that not one soldier was killed, that not one soldier was
wounded, that not one soldier received so much as a scratch, unless from
the bushes through which he pursued his human prey. It was not war: it
was a massacre. These poor people fled like panic-struck sheep, and the
soldiery tracked them like wolves. The human heart could wish to take
refuge in incredulity, but alas! the worst testimony of all is found in
the official reports of the actors themselves.

A few terrible anecdotes will give reality to the picture. George
Marshall, a mulatto, was taken up with others as a straggler, and
ordered to receive fifty lashes. With each lash the unfortunate man
gritted his teeth and turned his head, whether from pain or anger is
uncertain. The provost-marshal construed this into a threatening look,
and ordered him to be hung, which was done. There was no proof whatever
that Marshall had any connection with the riot. A company of Maroons
discovered a body of blacks, men, women, and children, who had taken
refuge up in the trees, and stood and deliberately shot them, one