Sheppard Lee, Written by Himself. Vol. II (of 2)

CHAPTER XVIII.
IN WHICH THE AUTHOR APPROACHES A CLIMAX IN HIS ADVENTURES

And now arose a train of incidents, by which I was taught three things, namely – first, the manner in which my merchants designed giving a value to their merchandise not inherent and intrinsic to it (for, of a truth, my abolition principles, as I said before, had never been carried to the point of notoriety, or even notice); secondly, the love with which a southron regards those pious philanthropists who will have him good and virtuous against his own will; and, thirdly, the religious respect for law and order which is so prominent a feature in the American character.

To make me valuable, it was necessary I should be made famous; and this was easily accomplished in a land where men make up their opinions for themselves, according as they are instructed. It was only necessary to assure some half dozen or more independent sovereigns that I was famous, to ensure their making me so. And this my kidnappers did. They told everybody they met that they had secured Zachariah Longstraw, the famous abolitionist, the very life and soul of northern incendiarism, whom they were carrying to Louisiana, to be Lynched according to law; and as the circumstance would, of course, get into every patriotic newspaper along the way, it was certain I should be made famous enough before I got there, and they thus enjoy the advantage of advertising their commodity without paying a cent to the printer.

It was astonishing (and to none more than myself) to witness the suddenness with which I was exalted from obscurity to distinction, and the readiness with which every living soul, upon being told my name, character, and reputation, remembered all about me and my misdeeds. "Yes," cried one worthy personage, shaking at me a fist minus two fingers and a half, "I have heerd of him often enough: he lives in New-York, and he sells sendary pictures, packed up between the soles of niggur shoes." – "Yes!" cried another, who had but one eye, "I have read all about him: he lives in Boston, keeps a niggur school, and prints sendary papers, a hundred thousand at a time, to set niggurs insurrecting." In short, they remembered not only all that the unworthy Joshua told them to my disparagement, but a thousand things that the imagination of one suggested to the credulity of another. It was in vain that I endeavoured to say any thing in denial or defence; ridicule and revilement, threats and execrations, were my only answers. It was clear, that by the time we reached the Mississippi, I should be the most important personage in America; and that, if my value as an article of merchandise was to be determined by the distinction I won on the road, my friends, Joshua and Samuel, would make their fortunes by the speculation. But it was not my fate to travel beyond the bounds of the Ancient Dominion.

It happened, that on this day an election was held in the district through which we were travelling, to return a representative to Congress, in lieu of one who had fought his way into the shoes of a chargé. All the world – that is, all the district – was therefore in arms; and men and boys, Americans and Irishmen, were making their way to the polls as fast and comfortably as two-mile-an-hour hard-trotting horses could carry them; and thither also, as it appeared, or in that direction, we were ourselves bending our course. As we advanced, therefore, we found ourselves gliding into a current of human bodies – honest republicans, moving onward to the polls, all of whom were ready to add their approval to my claims, or those the kidnappers made for me, to the honour of Lynchdom. The word was passed from one to another, that the Yankee cart contained the famous abolitionist, Zachariah Longstraw; they pressed around to look at and revile me, to discourse with the kidnappers on my demerits, and to express their delight that such a renowned member of the incendiary gang, as they called that class of conscientious people, should at last be on the road to justice.

And thus I was rolled along, attended by sundry groups, which grew fast into crowds, consisting of persons who rejoiced over my capture, and painted to my ears, in words uncommonly rough and ferocious, the fate that awaited me when arrived at my place of destination.

That place, as it chanced, was nearer than I either expected or desired. As the crowd thickened, the sounds of wrath and triumph increased, becoming more terrible to my auditories. A new idea came into the minds of the sovereigns. A villain, seven feet and a half high, mounted on a horse just half that altitude, who had a great knife-scar across his nose and cheek, and a dozen similar seams on his hands, rode up to the cart, and giving me a diabolical look, cried out "Whaw! what aw the use of carrying the crittur so faw? I say, Vawginnee is the place for Lynching, atter all. I say, gentlemen and Vawginians! I go for Lynching right off-hand. Old Vawginnee for evvaw!"

Loud and terrible was the roar of voices with which the throng testified their approbation of the barbarian's proposal. It was agreed I ought to be, and should be, Lynched on the spot. The kidnappers appealed to the justice of "Virginians," requesting them not to invade "the sacred rights of private property," – "they could not think of giving up their prisoner for nothing; they meant him solely for the Louisiana market." But things were coming to a crisis, and that my conductors perceived. They whipped up to escape the throng; but in vain. The further they went, the more they became involved in the crowd, having now arrived at the village where the favourite candidate was stumping among his constituents, and promising them worlds of reform, retrenchment, and public virtue, provided they would send him to Congress. I could hear from my box (my friend Joshua having taken care to lock me up at the first sign of danger), as we entered the village, the distant cries of "Hampden Jones for ever!" mingled with those nearer ones of my persecutors, "Lynch the abolitionist!" and the loudly-expressed remonstrances of my friends against invasion of their rights, coupled with threats to have the law of any one who robbed them of their property.

But threats and appeals were alike wasted on the independent freemen of that district. Joined by the voters and others already assembled at the polls, who, at the cry of "Lynch the abolitionist!" had deserted their orator, to join in the nobler sport of Lynching, they increased in wrath and enthusiasm; and, stopping the cart and breaking open my prison-house, they dragged me into the light of day, one man calling for a pistol, another a knife, a third a rope, and a fourth a cord of good dry wood and a coal of fire, to "burn the villain alive." Such a horrible clamour never before afflicted my ears or soul. I saw that, abolitionist or not, it was all over with me; and so saw honest Joshua and Samuel, whose only solace for this unlucky interruption to their speculation, was a call some one generously made to take up a subscription for their benefit, seeing that it was "beneath the dignity of the chivalry of Virginia to cheat even a Yankee of what was justly his due."

CHAPTER XIX.
CONTAINING A SPECIMEN OF ELOQUENCE, WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF THE DANGERS OF LYNCHDOM

At this moment the orator and candidate of the day, stalking up in high dudgeon to find what superior attraction had robbed him of his audience, laid eyes upon me. I thought I had seen him before; and verily I had. He was that identical gentleman, the master of the fugitive slave whom I had concealed in my house in Philadelphia, and then clapped into prison for robbing me, whence his master recovered him. There was no mistaking the gentleman: He was a young man of twenty-six or seven, six feet high and one foot wide, long-limbed, with small feet and huge hands, a great shock of Indian-looking hair, vast, solemn black eyes, a mouth wide and square, and a brow that might have suited a patriarch, it was so wide, and lofty, and wrinkled. He was evidently a man destined to shake the walls of the Capitol, and cause stenographers to groan; the Tully shone in his eye, the Demosthenes moved on his lip – there was genius even in the shape of his nose.

"I recollect the man," said he, with a voice that might have come from the bowels of a double-bass, it was so deep, rolling, and sonorous; "he hid my boy Pompey. His name is Longshanks; he is a Quaker, a philanthropist – an abolitionist!"

"Hampden Jones for ever!" cried the delighted sovereigns. "We'll hang him" (meaning me, however, and not the orator) "over the poll-window, and then vote for Hampden Jones, the friend of the law, the friend of the constitution, the friend of the south!"

"Stay, friends," said Hampden Jones, and his voice stilled the tumult; "I have a word to say on the subject of abolition."

"Hampden Jones for ever!" cried the republicans; and Hampden Jones stepped up on the head of a barrel, and stretched forth his right arm. He stretched forth his left also, and then, clinching both fists, and pursing his brows together until the balls beneath them looked like rolling grape-shot, he said, —

"Gentlemen – fellow-freemen of Virginia! The bulwarks of a nation's liberties are the virtues of her children. Compared with these, what is wealth? what is grandeur? what even are power and glory? These – riches and greatness, power and renown – are the possessions of the Old World; yet what have they availed her? Look around that ancient hemisphere, and tell me where among its blood-stained battle-fields! where under its polluted palaces! where in its haunts of the despot and the slave! you can find the love of liberty, the love of law, the love of order, the love of justice, that give permanence to the institutions they adorn, and, like the laurel crown of the Cesars, guard from the thunderbolt the temples they bind in the wreath of honour? Look for them in the Old World, but look in vain. The mighty Colossus of Christendom, once vital with virtue, lifts its decrepit bulk beyond the verge of the Atlantic, a vast and mournful monument of decay! Age and the shocks of the elements, the wash of the tempest and the lightning-stroke, have ploughed its marble forehead with wrinkles; mosses hang from its brows, and the dust of its own ruin – dust animated only by insects and reptiles, the offspring of corruption – moulders over its buried feet! The virtues that once distinguished – that almost deified – the immortal Colossus, have fled from the old, to find their home in the New World. I look for them only in the bosoms of Americans!"

Here the orator, who had pronounced this sublime exordium with prodigious earnestness and effect, paused, while the welkin rung with the shouts of rapture its complimentary close was so well fitted to inspire. As for me, I felt a doleful skepticism as to the justness of the compliment, having the very best reason to distrust that love of liberty, law, order, and justice, which was about to consign me to ropes and flames, without asking the permission of a judge and jury. Moreover, I could not exactly see how Mr. Hampden Jones's remarks on the old and new world had any thing to do with the subject of abolition, which he had risen to discuss; and, indeed, this difficulty seemed to have beset others as well as myself, several crying out with great enthusiasm, "Let's have something on abolition; and then to the Lynching!" while others exclaimed, "Let's have the Lynching first, and the speech afterward."

"Abolition, my fellow-citizens!" said the orator, "it is my intention to address you on the subject of abolition. But first let me apply what I have already said. I have said, and I repeat, that the love of liberty, of law, of order, of justice, belongs peculiarly to the free sons of America. Let me counsel, let me advise, let me entreat you, to have this noble truth in remembrance on this present occasion. Beware lest, in what you now intend to do, you give occasion to the enemies of freedom to doubt your virtue, to suspect the reality of your love of law, order, and justice, to stigmatize you as friends only of riot and outrage."

These words filled me with joyful astonishment. I began to believe the youthful Tully was about to interfere in my favour, to rebuke the violence of his adherents, and so save them from the sin of blood-guiltiness.

So also thought the indignant sovereigns themselves; and many, elevating their voices, demanded furiously, "if he meant to protect the bloody abolitionist?"

"By no means," said Mr. Hampden Jones, with great emphasis; "what I have to advise is, that if we are to do execution upon the wretch, we shall proceed about it in an orderly and dignified way, resolve ourselves into a great and solemn tribunal, and so adjudge him to death with a regularity and decorum which shall excite the admiration and win the approbation of the whole world."

"Hampden Jones for ever!" cried the sovereigns; and so it appeared that all the benefit I was to derive from his interference, was only to be despatched in an orderly manner.

CHAPTER XX.
IN WHICH SHEPPARD LEE REACHES THE DARKEST PERIOD OF HIS EXISTENCE

Seeing this, I became horribly frightened – indeed, so much so, that I was incapable of observing properly what ensued. I have a faint recollection that Mr. Hampden Jones resumed his discourse and harangued those who would listen, on the subject he had promised to discuss; and I remember that his auditors echoed every tenth word with tremendous shouts. But what I remember better than all was, a spectacle that soon attracted my attention, being nothing less than the apparition of five or six stout negroes climbing up a tree hard by, dragging a rope after them, and tying it round a branch; all which they executed with uncommon spirit and zeal, shaking their fists at me all the time, and calling me a "cussed bobolitionist."

What was to become of me now? Had I entered the body of the most generous and humane of men only to be hanged? A cold sweat broke over me; my knees knocked together. The men who held me, held me faster. My judges, the members of the great and solemn tribunal, began to decide upon my fate with the regularity and decorum (advised by their orator) which were to win the approbation and admiration of the whole world – that is to say, by each man marching up to the orator's barrel, where stood a committee appointed to receive the votes, pronouncing his name, and voting to "hang the incendiary."

All this while, I believe, I was endeavouring to say something in my defence; but I have not the slightest recollection of what it was. Matters were coming – I may say had come – to a crisis, and my life hung upon a thread; when suddenly a negro, who had been among the most active and zealous of the volunteers on the tree, fell from a high branch to the ground, and besides breaking his own neck, as I understood by the cry that was set up, crushed two or three white men that stood below.

This produced a great hubbub, and those who had stationed themselves about me as guards ran forward to see what mischief had been done. As they ran one way, I betook me to my heels and ran another. I rushed into the nearest house; but, being instantly pursued and ousted, I fled into a garden, from which I was as quickly chased by men and dogs, the first screaming, and the second howling and barking, so that the uproar they made was inexpressible.

Fear lent me wings; but I was surrounded; and run whithersoever I might, I always found myself brought up by some party or other presenting itself in front. The exercise, while it inflamed my own terrors, only exasperated the rage of my persecutors; and I was persuaded they would tear me to pieces the moment they caught me. Judge of my feelings, then, when I found myself hemmed in on all sides in a little field on the skirts of the village, with a party close at my elbow, on which I had stumbled without seeing it until roused by its cries.

I looked up and saw that it consisted of about a dozen negroes, who were carrying the body of their companion, the unlucky volunteer who had broken his neck falling from the tree; but which body they now threw upon the ground, and with loud screams of "He-ah, mossa John!" and "He-ah, mossa Dickey!" began to scamper after me with all their might.

There was but one resource left me, and that let the reader determine hereafter of how deplorable a character. I made a successful dodge, followed by a dash right through the screaming Africans, who perhaps hesitated to lay a rough hand on one of my colour, and, reaching the body of their companion, cried, half to myself and half to the insensible clay, "It is better to be a slave than a dead man; and the scourge, whatever romantic persons may say to the contrary, is preferable, at any time, to the halter. If thou art dead, my sable brother, yield my spirit a refuge in thy useless body!"

That was the last I remember of the adventure, for I had no sooner uttered the words than I fell into a trance.

BOOK VI

CONTAINING A HISTORY AND A MORAL

CHAPTER I.
IN WHICH SHEPPARD LEE FINDS EVERY THING BLACK ABOUT HIM

When I opened my eyes I found that I was lying in a hovel, very mean of appearance, yet with a certain neatness and cleanliness about it that prevented it from looking squalid. It is true that the floor, which was of planks, was somewhat awry and dilapidated; that the little window, which, with the door, furnished, or was meant to furnish, its only light, was rather bountifully bedecked with old hats and scraps of brown paper; and that the walls of ill-plastered logs displayed divers gleaming chinks, and vistas through them of the sunny prospects without. Nevertheless, the place did not look amiss for a poor man, and, in my experience as a philanthropist, I had seen hundreds much more miserable.

An old woman sat at the fireplace, nodding over a stew, the fumes of which were both savoury and agreeable. The old woman was, however, as black as the outside of her stew-pan – in other words, a negress; and this circumstance striking upon the chords of association, I began to remember what had lately befallen me. A terrible suspicion flashed into my mind. Had I not – but before I could ask myself the question, my hand, which I had raised to scratch my head, came into contact with a mop of elastic wool, such as never grew upon the scalp of a white man. I started up in bed and looked at my hands and arms; they were of the hue of ebony – or, to speak more strictly, of smoked mahogany. I saw a fragment of looking-glass hanging on the wall within my reach. I snatched it down, and took a survey of my physiognomy. Miserable me! my face was as black as my arms – and, indeed, somewhat more so – presenting a sable globe, broken only by two red lips of immense magnitude, and a brace of eyes as white and as wide as plain China saucers, or peeled turnips.

"Whaw dah!" cried the old woman, roused by the noise I made; "whaw dat, you nigga Tom? what you doin' dah? Lorra bless us! if a nigga break a neck, can't a nigga hold-a still?"

Alas! and had my fate brought me to this grievous pass? Was there no other situation in life sufficiently wretched, but that I must take up my lot in the body of a miserable negro slave? How idle had been all my past discontent! how foolish the persuasion I had indulged five different times, that I was, on each occasion, the most unhappy of men! I had forgotten the state of the bondman, the condition of the expatriated African. Now I was at last to learn in reality what it was to be the victim of fortune, what to be the exemplar of wretchedness, the true repository of all the griefs that can afflict a human being. Already I felt, in imagination, the blow of the task-master on my back, the fetter on my limb, the iron in my soul; and when the old woman made a step towards me, perhaps to discover why I made no reply to her questions, I was so prepossessed with the idea of whips and lashes, that I made a dodge under the bedclothes, as if to escape a thwack.

"Golly matty! is de nigga mad?" cried the Jezebel. "I say, you nigga Tom, what you doin'? How you neck feel now?"

"My neck?" thought I, recollecting that it had been broken, and wondering in what way it had been mended. I clapped my hands to it; it was very stiff and sore: while I felt at it, the old woman told me some great doctor had twisted a great "kink" out of it; but I bestowed little notice on what she said. My mind ran upon other matters; I could think of nothing but cowhides and cat-o'-nine-tails, that were to welcome me to bondage.

"Aunty," said I —why I addressed the old lady thus I know not; but I have observed that negroes always address their seniors by the titles of uncle and aunt, and I suppose the instinct was on me – "am I a slave?"

"What a fool nigga to ax a question!" said she. "What you gwying to be, den, but old Massa Jodge's nigga-boy Tom? What you git up faw, ha?" – (I was making an attempt to rise) —

"Massa docta say you stay a-bed. What you git up faw, ha?"

"I intend to run away," said I; and truly that was the notion then uppermost in my mind; and it is very likely I should have made a bolt for the door that moment, had I not discovered an uncommon weakness in my lower limbs, which prevented my getting out of bed.

"Whaw! what a fool!" cried the beldam, regarding me with surprise and contempt; "what you do when you run away, ha? Who'll hab you? who'll feed you? who'll take care of you? who'll own a good-fo'-nothin' runaway nigga, I say, ha? Kick him 'bout h'yah, kick him 'bout dah, poor despise nigga wid no massa, jist as despise as any free nigga! You run away, ha? what den?" continued my sable monitress, warming into eloquence as she spoke: "take up constable, clap him in jail, salt him down cowskin. Dat all? No! sell him low price, send Mississippi – what den? Work in de cotton-field, pull at de cane. Dat all? No! cussed overseer wid a long whip – cut h'yah, cut dah, cut high, cut low – whip all day, cuff all night – take all de skin off – oh! dey do whip to de debbil in de Mississippi!" And as the old lady concluded, to give more effect to her expressions, she fell to rubbing her back and dodging her head from side to side, until I had the liveliest idea in the world of that very castigation of which I stood in such horror.