BATTLEBORO, N.C. (AP) - In a story June 10 about a marker being dedicated to a slave, The Associated Press reported erroneously the details of a slaying committed by a slave known as Will. Will killed his overseer, not his owner.
A corrected version of the story is below:
North Carolina marker to honor slave who killed overseer
Officials in North Carolina are dedicating a historical marker to a slave who killed his overseer and the lawyer whose arguments spared him the death penalty
BATTLEBORO, N.C. (AP) - A historical marker being unveiled in North Carolina remembers a slave who killed his overseer and the lawyer whose arguments spared him the death penalty.
The marker dedicated Saturday in in Battleboro calls the actions in 1834 of a slave remembered only as Will as “a simple act of resistance to slavery.”
Will refused to give a fellow slave a hoe he made with his own hands, so their overseer shot Will in the back at an Edgefield County plantation. Will then cut the overseer on the hip with a knife, and the overseer bled to death, the News & Observer of Raleigh reports (https://bit.ly/2seWTLe).
The marker also honors lawyer Bartholomew Moore. He got Will’s murder charge argued down to manslaughter by saying even slaves had a right to self-defense.
Moore, who would later become North Carolina’s attorney general, argued to the state Supreme Court that “absolute power is irresponsible power.”
The argument persuaded justice William Gaston. “The prisoner is a human being degraded by slavery, but yet having ’organs, senses, dimensions, passions,’ like our own,” Gaston wrote.
Will’s owner wanted to avoid the trouble of having a slave who killed among his other slaves, so he sent Will to Mississippi.
There, Will killed a fellow slave and was put to death by hanging.
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This story has corrected the name of county where plantation was located to Edgecombe.
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