Convict labour was
contracted out to private parties, with little or no effective State
supervision, on terms which, though exceedingly profitable to the
State, were disastrous to free competitive labour. More than one
lawmaker besides Fetters was numbered among these contractors.
Leaving the realm of crime, they found that on hundreds of farms,
ignorant Negroes, and sometimes poor whites, were held in bondage
under claims of debt, or under contracts of exclusive employment for
long terms of years--contracts extorted from ignorance by craft, aided
by State laws which made it a misdemeanour to employ such persons
elsewhere. Free men were worked side by side with convicts from the
penitentiary, and women and children herded with the most depraved
criminals, thus breeding a criminal class to prey upon the State.
In the case of Fetters alone the colonel found a dozen instances where
the law, bad as it was, had not been sufficient for Fetters's purpose,
but had been plainly violated. Caxton discovered a discharged guard of
Fetters, who told him of many things that had taken place at Sycamore;
and brought another guard one evening, at that time employed there,
who told him, among other things, that Bud Johnson's life, owing to
his surliness and rebellious conduct, and some spite which Haines
seemed to bear against him, was simply a hell on earth--that even a
strong Negro could not stand it indefinitely.
A case was made up and submitted to the grand jury.
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