In 1863 When a Black Man Refused to be Whipped Was He a Murderer if He Killed His Former Enslaver?

Pat Young

Brev. Brig. Gen'l
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Here is an incident that I read about yesterday set during the liminal period of Reconstruction during the Civil War. It is in the new book Embattled Freedom by Amy Taylor.

Monroe Bogan was an Arkansas slaveowner who, in 1863 claimed to own West Brogan. The problem with this claim was that Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation freed Dennis on January 1, 1863. whose reliance on the whip was growing in proportion to his desperation. Monroe Bogan was a twenty-eight-year-old. He had only recently arrived in Arkansas from South Carolina (so much for "a man's state is his country"). In the 1860 Census he is listed as owning 37 people.

On December 15, 1863, Monroe had chastised West for refusing an order to work and for trying to run off to the Union soldiers at Helena, Ark. According to Taylor:

Their second encounter was then witnessed by a woman named Maria Bogan, who was nursing her infant at the time. She realized something was happening only when children came running into her dwelling, shouting, “Master is trying to whip West.” Maria then went to the door just in time to look outside and see West strike back with an axe. She quickly turned and shielded the children—and herself—from the scene. It was a grisly one: her master was hit on the head and neck at least twice and his head was “nearly severed” from his shoulders. Monroe Bogan was dead.
Taylor, Amy Murrell. Embattled Freedom (Civil War America) (p. 137). The University of North Carolina Press. Kindle Edition.
 
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