deadly affrays with bowie knives, dirks, pistols.
rifles, guns, or other death weapons, and _lynchings_. 6th. The crimes
enumerated will, for the most part, be only those perpetrated
_openly_, without _attempt at concealment_. 7th. We shall not attempt
to give a full list of the affrays, &c., that took place in the
respective states during the period selected, as the only files of
southern papers to which we have access are very imperfect.

The reader will perceive, from these preliminaries, that only a
_small_ proportion of the crimes actually perpetrated in the
respective slave states during the period selected, will be entered
upon this list. He will also perceive, that the crimes which will be
presented are of a class rarely perpetrated in the free states; and if
perpetrated there at all, they are, with scarcely an exception,
committed either by slaveholders, temporarily resident in them, or by
persons whose passions have been inflamed by the poison of a southern
contact--whose habits and characters have become perverted by living
among slaveholders, and adopting the code of slaveholding morality.

We now proceed to the details, commencing with the new state of
Arkansas.

ARKANSAS.

At the last session of the legislature of that state, Col. John
Wilson, President of the Bank at Little Rock, the capital of the
state, was elected Speaker of the House of Representatives. He had
been elected to that office for a number of years successively, and
was one of the most influential citizens of the state. While presiding
over the deliberations of the House, he took umbrage at words spoken
in debate by Major Anthony, a conspicuous member, came down from the
Speaker's chair, drew a large bowie knife from his bosom, and attacked
Major A., who defended himself for some time, but was at last stabbed
through the heart, and fell dead on the floor. Wilson deliberately
wiped the blood from his knife, and returned to his seat. The
following statement of the circumstances of the murder, and the trial
of the murderer, is abridged from the account published in the
Arkansas Gazette, a few months since--it is here taken from the
Knoxville (Tennessee) Register, July 4, 1838.

"On the 14th of December last, Maj. Joseph J. Anthony, a member of the
Legislature of Arkansas, was murdered, while performing his duty as a
member of the House of Representatives, by John Wilson, Speaker of
that House.

"The facts were these: A bill came f