The Ashland union. [volume] (Ashland, Ashland County, Ohio) 1854-1868, 1856-12-17
Slave Rebellion in Tennessee

!
Eleven Negroes hung-great excite.
msent and Apprehensi0n-Painted
White Man Leader,
We clip from the Evansville Journal OF
Saturday morning, the following start
ling news of an extended %servile insur.
rection in Tennessee, and efforts Of the
people to suppress it. There have been
slave rebellions anticipated, and consid-
cradle excitement caused by the fear OF
them, in Kentucky, Arkansas, Missouri
and Tennessee, all within the past two
weeks, indicating a singular coincidence
of feeling and purpose among the slaves,
or an extension of conspiracy hardly less
singular:
b.; We had very serious and alarming re-
ports in our city last evening from the
the Cumberland river in regard to the
movements of the blacks, and frem all
we have heard, the excitement among
the people, through the middle district
of Tennessee, is far greater and more gen
eral than we supposed when we wrote
the article in another part of this morn
Tags sheet. Through what is called the
Iron District, on the Cumberland and
Tennessee rivers, there are from $3.50
to 10000 slaves employed at the iron
works; they are there cougregated in
large numbers, working in the various
labors of making charcoal, digging ore,
and tending the furnaces, in gangs, most
ly by themselves, with a few whites for
general overseers. There are many of
these works situated within a few miles
of each other, and in sections where
| there are but few white inhabitants.
All these circumstances give the blacks
great facilities to plot and combine for
insurrection, if the hellish spirit be once
awakened among them. There is now
conclusive evidence that such a spirit
has been at work in this irouregion, and
that a plan has been set on foo: for a
general rising this Christmas, when they
shall have gained the unlimited freedom
of roaming and frolicking that it al,
ways granted them daring the holt
days.
A gentlemen who arrived last evening
informs US that at Dover on the Cum
berland they had obtained such evidence
as left no doubt of a wide spread con-
spiracy existing in that neighborhood,
and that a number of the ring-leaders
bad been discovered and arrested and
that eleven of them had been hung by
the excited inhabitants and that among
those arrested was a person who had
been in the neighborhood many months,
who had always passed as a negro but
on his arrest was found to be a white
man, painted and disguised as a ne
gro. .
Our informant says, the people being
satisfied that he had been the prime mo-
yer and instigator of the rebellious de-
signs of the blacks, took him to the
woods, and by the unanimous condem-
nation of those present., he was sentenc-
ed to receive nine hundred lashes; aud
that he expired before tho renalty had
been fully inflicted.
These oc~currencesh had produced gen
eral CONSIDERATION and terror, and the
women and children were fleeing and be.
ing sent off for safety. The men were
arming and organizing for defence, and
the negroes were being confined or kept
under very vigilant watch. We detail
these reports as they are related to US
on credible anthority-hoping the alarm
is exaggerated, and the retribution upon
those arrested may not have been SO
awful as stated. %