James Bowser, a free black from Nansemond County, Va., decided to help the Union army by spying on the South, according to Virginia Hayes Smith of Norfolk, Va., an elderly black lady who related Bowser's story to Virginia Writers Project field interviewers in 1937. Her recollections were subsequently published in the book "Virginia Folk Legends."
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Bowser's white neighbors, some of whom coveted Bowser's farmland, heard rumors of his activities, Smith said. A mob of planters attacked Bowser's house at night and dragged out Bowser and his son.
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."After severely beating both father and son, the horde made Bowser lie on the ground and stretch his neck over a log like a chicken on a chopping block," said Smith, "Then someone cut his head off. The plan was to kill the boy in the same manner, but the more thoughtful ones disagreed. They suggested that he be left to carry the news of this ghastly example back to the other Negroes. The mob gave in."

As he had always, when lecturing, concealed the name of his master, and likewise changed his own, and at the same time withheld all the details of his escape, and where he had been born, suspicions were raised by the slaveholders, who were very much disturbed by his appearance in public, that he was an impostor. To counteract this he at length resolved to write his life, which he accordingly did, but this only exposed him still more to the rage of his persecutors. An answer was published to his life by one of them—a Mr. Thomson, a friend of his master's—who, as argument against him, contended that he had none of the features of a slave, and particularly of the individual he represented himself to be. He could face white men—was learned—had not the crouching character of the negro—and, in short, was very different from the generality of slaves.