Hardy’s Lies

We have read in the State Sentinel that the editor of this paper (who is now absent from his post on business), murdered in cold blood, with a bowie knife, our unoffended negro on the streets of Tuscaloosa- that Allen Williams, an honest freedman, and guilty of no crime, was kidnapped and whipped by Klu Kluxes, and only escaped assassination by the interference of timely aid- that a prominent merchant of Tuscaloosa was compelled to close his store and abandon a lucrative mercantile business, upon penalty of his life, and that other good citizens have been driven from their homes by threats of violence and bloodshed. We will simply state wherein these reports are false. That old John Hardy has lied, no one will doubt for a moment. The facts are these. Mr. Randolph, the editor of this paper accidentally saw a negro make an unprovoked assault with a bludgeon upon a defenseless white man, who was in an altercation with another negro, and going in to rescue the white man, Mr. Randolph, was himself attacked, and such used means he found convenient to “chastise and disable the insolent rascal that had stricken him with a bludgeon. No bowie knife was used, and the negro is now well, although richly deserved death. Allen Williams is known as a negro of notoriously bad character and was known when a slave as the most experience to the county. He was recently taken out and chastised according to the old slavery standard (as we are informed) for having offered impernace to respectable white ladies. No one went to his assistance, and the negro was left tied to a tree in the boneyard. The prominent merchant alluded to, is contemptible little counter hopping Jew that never owned a bolt of goods in his life. He was a clerk employed to do the negro trade, and the only business that has been discontinued by his absence, is the negro trade at the back door on Sunday. He was detected in distributing arms and ammunition to scallywag negroes during the night of excitement in Tuscaloosa, and was informed by one of our spirited citizens that he would be waited upon by the point of a gentlemen’s boot unless he decamped within the space of the time allowed, the Jews by Grant to evacuate Kentucky. We suppose Spencer and McGown are the other exiles referred to. It is rumored that the former has gone to Montgomery to buy a new carpet bag, and the letter to the North to secure the services of a Philadelphia lawyer to adjust his balance sheet with the Federal Government.