Summary

Democratic editors disdained local blacks and presented them regularly as criminals, unfit for free society and law. They want a special session of the court to deal only with black defendants.

EXCERPT:

"This will afford them time to gather together as many cases as will occupy the Court and time; and also to crowd our petty Court House with a crowd of drunken, worthless darkies, who can ornament the building by poking their heads out of the windows, standing around in every hole and corner, and squirting tobacco juice on the passers by."

Full-text web version of newspaper

"Franklin County's papers spent more ink--almost all of it negative--on its nearly two thousand free blacks than Augusta did on its five thousand enslaved people."