My sceptic alarm is going off. All of Africa is plagued with this type of violence and white people from Scotland and Ireland get blamed?
The slaves were all, after the “Late Unpleasantness”, at least two generations removed from Africa, and I’m quite sure that behavior was not tolerated in the antebellum era.
But, they were generally aware, especially after the war, of that behavior among the poor whites (generally descended from the Lowland Scots) they encountered.
Look up border reivers [border raiders] - essentially “land pirates,” notorious for stealing cattle, etc. They were the ancestral stock that were used in the plantation of Ulster to cow the Irish.
From Ulster they were brought to the colonies to be used as a buffer between the settled coast and the Indian-French interior beyond the Blue Ridge.