Negro Insurrection

The following account of the negro insurrections at Dover, appears in a Kentucky paper:

"Tuesday morning I went to Dover and arrived there about two o'clock.  The people had hung four negroes at 11 o'clock that morning, and two more were then in town to be hung. I got to the place of execution in time to see the last one go off.  Of the six that were hung, three were preachers.  They were all proved to be ringleaders. I learned that the men at the forge were at work whipping the truth out of their negroes, so I rode out there that night, and was up with them all night.  I never had such feelings in my life.  I saw a list of negroes that had been whipped, and was told what they had all stated, and then I heard the balance examined - some taking five and six hundred lashes before they would tell the tale; but when they did tell it, it was the same that all the others had said. Some told the whole story without taking a lick.  Those that were examined were not permitted to see those that were not; they were kept entirely separate, and a guard over each.  One of the negroes at the forge died from whipping that night, several hours after the operation.

"The substance of the testimony there was, that Christmas-eve night they were all to rise.  Old Hal, Amos, Anderson, Grey and Ishmael were to murder Parish, the manager, and his family, except his wife, and she in future was to be the wife of Ishmael.  They were to kill young Pepper next (brother of Judge Pepper), and other whites that might have been about the place. They were then to meet the Mill negroes at the forks of the road, as Pidgit's, near Long Creek, and were to make a joint charge upon Dover; after they had cleaned up Dover, and provided themselves with arms and ammunition, they were to scatter out over the country generally.  At the mill, the negroes, or rather, Bob Murrill, was to kill George Lewis first, then Henry Erwin, and then the balance indiscriminately.  Lewis and Erwin whipped Bob Murrill to death.

"At the old Dover furnaces, Charles Napier was to kill brother George first; Mat. Hutson was to kill young Tom Buckingham next; and Bill Blair was to kill Edwin, George's son, and Henry and Willie Wyans, and then go to the mill.  Brother George hung Charlie Napier one day about 11 o'clock, and let him hand till next day about 1 o'clock - 26 hours.

I have no doubt but that it is a universal thing all over the Southern States, and that every negro, fifteen years old, either knows of it or is into it; and the most confidential house servants are the ones that are to be the most active in the destruction of their families.  The negroes, every where they were examined, all agree that the men women and children are to be slain, and that the young women are to be kept as wives for themselves, and a good many of them about Dover and the furnaces went so far as to select their future companions."

from the January 10, 1857 issue Harper’s Weekly, which didn't say from which Kentucky paper they republished this.