1 page of a 4 pg. autograph letter. In the middle of family chit-chat, Amanda Bethune interjects: “I understand there was a runaway negro hung himself in the jail last night, I did not learn the particulars…” Bethune was born and raised in Philadelphia. The family moved to North Carolina her father was appointed a coiner at the U.S. Mint in Charlotte. After his death, she married a tailor and was leader of the women’s temperance reform movement in Charlotte. Written a year after passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, we could find no published account of this incident - especially since it came days after a published news report of another fugitive slave who was ambushed, shot and killed by a patrol in Charlotte. One wonders: Did the jailed Black man take his own life out of desperation, or could this even be the euphemistic account of a lynching?
1 page of a 4 pg. autograph letter. In the middle of family chit-chat, Amanda Bethune interjects: “I understand there was a runaway negro hung himself in the jail last night, I did not learn the particulars…” Bethune was born and raised in Philadelphia. The family moved to North Carolina her father was appointed a coiner at the U.S. Mint in Charlotte. After his death, she married a tailor and was leader of the women’s temperance reform movement in Charlotte. Written a year after passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, we could find no published account of this incident - especially since it came days after a published news report of another fugitive slave who was ambushed, shot and killed by a patrol in Charlotte. One wonders: Did the jailed Black man take his own life out of desperation, or could this even be the euphemistic account of a lynching?
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.jpg "Source: Christie's")
.jpg "Source: Christie's")
