"Mad" Enough to Kill: Enslaved Women, Murder, and Southern Courts

By probing into the rationales for the defendants' actions and of the men who decided their fates, this essay illuminates similarities and differences in two capital cases linking the enslaved women together through age, legal status, and "madness." Obviously, the assault was not a closely guarded secret, but none of the rumormongers weighed in on whether the sexual abuse of the 14-year-old constituted what historian Nell Irvin Painter calls "soul murder," that could lead to psychological depression, hatred of the abuser, or other forms of "at risk" behavior.