FEARFUL LYNCHING SCENE.

Tuapeka Times, Volume II, Issue 68, 29 May 1869, Page 6

FEARFUL LYNCHING SCENE.

A letter from Memphis, Tennessee, in the " Chicago Republican," describes the atrocious manner in which a negro man was put to death for eloping with a white girl, daughter of a blacksmith, residing about eight miles from that city :—": — " The fugitives made their exit in the evening, taking with them 400 dols. in gold and 145 dols. in greenbacks, belonging to the girl's father, which the lady purloined as hex lawful inheritance. Their flight being soon discovered by the girl's, .parents, they were overtaken and arrested at a small town a few miles distant, on the morning after the first night of the honeymoon. The girl, who confessed herself the instigator of the elopement, and to have hired the negro to accompany her, was carried back to her parents, and as a punishment for her folly, received at most only a sharp rebuke. But her gallant was handcuffed and given over to the county patrols, who brought him back to within a short distance of his employer's house, and then besmeared him with tar, hung him by his hands to the limb of a tree, and set his tarred clothes on fire. Here he hung dangling in mid-air, writhing amid the scorching flames, which rapidly enveloped him, and his torturers, standing by grinning with delight at the cries of their victim, to have pity on him, and to spai*e his life. The cries of the wretched sufferer were unavailing, and he hung there wrapped in the fire till each particle- of his clothing dropped from his blistered body, and the rope which suspended him was also disconnected tyv the flames, when he fell to the ground with the entire surface of his body literally broiled and quivering with pain. Here he lay, till at last, becoming delirious with his pains, or aroused by a hope of escaping, he sprang to his feet and ran with all his might in the direction of a small creek, a few yards off, when the villains fired their revolvers at him, and he fell dead upon the ground.