Baton Rouge Weekly Advocate - 1855 Slave Trial

Date: January 9, 2014

Submitted by: Barbara P. Sevier

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Slave Chooses Death Rather Than Returning to Master

Baton Rouge, La., August 2nd, 1855

A negro man belonging to a Mr. Drury Boykin of Madison parish, having resisted his master, who came 
to take him from jail where he was committed as a runaway and assaulted and drawn blood from one of 
our citizens who was assisting Boykin, was tried on the 20th Inst., before two Justices and ten 
freeholders, under the black code; found guilty of criminally shedding a white man's blood, and 
sentenced to be hung as the law directed.

The negro has since expressed his willingness to be hung in preference to returning home, declaring 
that it had been his determination to be killed rather than suffer the punishment he would receive 
if he again fell into the hands of his master. 

Some of our citizens, from suspicious excited, took the responsibility, on the 21st, of examining the 
body of the negro, and found the Words "D. B." distinctly branded upon his body. The whole community 
is indignant at such inhuman cruelty, and is not surprised at the negro's acting as he did. Funds are 
being raised and a petition being gotten up to the Governor that his sentence may commuted.