Note 249 — Chapter VII · Lynch-law and its Justification

See John S. Bassett: “Slavery and Servitude in the Colony of North Carolina”—Johns Hopkins Historical Studies (1896), XIV, 199. In Virginia the punishment of castration was so frequently inflicted upon slaves by the county courts that the Assembly deemed it necessary to enact that “it shall not be lawful for any county or corporation court, to order and direct castration of any slave, except such slave shall be convicted of an attempt to ravish a white woman, in which case they may inflict such punishment.”—See Hening: “Virginia Statutes at Large,” VI, 3; VIII, 358; Samuel Sheperd: “Virginia Statutes at Large” (New Series, 1835), I, 125.