Читать книгу Other Fools and Their Doings, or, Life among the Freedmen - H. N. K. Goff - Страница 4

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“The murky shades o’ care

With starless gloom o’ercast my sullen sky.”

—Burns.

“Walk in, Mr. Roome; walk in. Glad to see you. Have a chair? Well, what is the news from Bean Island and Baconsville?”

“Bad, Mr. Elly, bad!” replied Uncle Jesse, as he seated himself, and took from his hat a huge red cotton pocket-handkerchief, with which he proceeded with great deliberation to wipe his dusky face and bald head.

“I did not know it was so warm out,” said the courteous host. “This office is such a cool place that I come up here Sunday afternoons to be cool and quiet. It is a good place to read.”

“I reckon it is not so warm to most folks. I’m hotter’n I ought to be, I know; but I’m worreted,” said Uncle Jesse, still wiping industriously with both hands at once, and then thrusting the handkerchief into his hat which he had been holding tightly between his knees, he placed it carefully upon the floor beside him, and putting a hand upon either knee, he leaned forward, looked earnestly into Mr. Elly’s face, and with a significant expression, and in a low tone asked, “Is you alone, Mr. Elly?”

“Yes; or, but—well, Mr. Watta is in the back office, but I can close the door”—rising.

“No, no,” said Uncle Jesse, raising both hands deprecatingly. “Ask him in; ask him in. Or, why can’t I go in there?” glancing around at doors and windows.

“Certainly you can,” replied Elly. “Did you want to see Mr. Watta?”

“I reckon so; yes. Well, now, this is what I call providential; and I reckon I wa’n’t fur wrong in coming, if it is Sunday. The folks in No’thern Ohio don’t do no business on Sundays, and money paid Sunday a’n’t paid at all—can be collected over again; but work is driving awfully now. The freshet put the cawn back so for awhile; but it is ketching up now. But I knowed I ought to come.”

Handshakings and preliminaries over, the trio were soon seated around a large writing table—colored men all of them. Both Elly and Watta were tall and slender—the former quite black, and the latter very light—and both had enjoyed the blessing of education at a Northern school established for the benefit of freedmen, and almost sanctified to the race by bearing the name of “Lincoln.”

Jesse Roome’s northern experiences had not been with books, save at evening schools, of which he had eagerly availed himself; but his naturally well-balanced mind and keen powers of observation had not been idle; and sensible ideas of common duties and relations of life in a highly-civilized and enlightened community were his reward.

Elly was a thriving lawyer and ex-member of the State Legislature, where he had been “Speaker of the House,” and, ever with an eye to business, he had already scented a fee in his visitor’s troubled manner and reply.

“You must excuse my abruptness, but I leave on the train for Columbia in half an hour,” said he, “and you and Watta can talk after I am gone. Now, what can I do for you?”

“First of all, I want some money for my services as constable; and second I want to talk about the political situation, and to tell you some things I have heard men say that is interested. Well, how I got to know this thing—”

“What thing?” asked the lawyer. “Why, that Elly and Watta and Kanrasp and some score of other radicals, has got to be killed,” said Uncle Jesse, lowering his voice to a husky whisper.

“Ha! ha! ha?” roared Elly, throwing himself back in his chair, till his head seemed in danger of getting wedged between the chair-back and a bookcase behind him. “Why, Roome, I thought you was a sensible man,” said he, when he had recovered his breath. “The days of the Ku-Klux Klan’s are over, and all done in this State. When we punished two hundred and fifty of the fifteen hundred ‘very respectable gentlemen,’ as they called each other, who were arrested in 1871-’2, the thing was killed out here, you see.”

“No, I don’t see,” said Roome.

“But do you suppose a man really means what he says when he talks like that now-a-days?” and the two threatened men laughed, and wriggled in great apparent merriment, and in true negro fashion, though really quaking with fear.

“I certainly do believe it, Mr. Elly, and Mr. Watta, and I only hope the good Laud will show that I’ve been afeared for you for nothing. The parties was in earnest, and intended it, I’m shor’; and you know I’m not a old woman, nor a baby to be scart for nothing.

“I’ve took the trouble to resk my life to tell yo’ to take care of you’n, and now I’ve done my part. I didn’t tell Watta right there to home, because I reckon as yo’ is a lawyer, Mr. Elly, I’d best tell you first, and see what is best to do for your protection. I taken trouble to do this. But Watta is here now, and I’m done,” said the old man in a grieved tone.

“We are much obliged for your kind intentions, though you needn’t have been so much scared about us.”

“Well, now, let me tell you,” and the farmer proceeded to narrate minutely the incidents and facts with which the reader is already acquainted, and others of similar import.

“Give me names and I’ll put them through in the law, for threats,” said Elly.

“I can’t do that,” said Jesse, folding his arms tightly.

“Why not?”

“Because I live in the woods, and my life wouldn’t be worth anything; and I a’n’t going to tell yo’, though you’ll believe me yet.”

“I believe you now, but I don’t believe you’re a white man.”

“You will yet though, I ha’n’t nothing more to say now, but just mind what I tell you. You is both men that is marked to be killed, because you is leading radicals; so the white folks says they is gwine to kill you and a score more right round here close; I can’t help it, but I’ve done my duty, and you must take car’ of yourselves. It wouldn’t be no use to prosecute this man. It would only make the whole of ’em mad, and worse than ever ’em open a hornet’s nest; but I want to ax you this favor, just remember my life now, as I’ve remembered your’n, and not tell that I told you this.”

“Oh, we won’t tell, and we’re much obliged to you for your good intentions but we don’t scare worth a cent, after all.”

Uncle Jesse left the office, and the other men walked down to the railroad station to meet the through train going north.

“What do you think of the old man’s story?” asked Watta.

“I don’t think much of it. He has maintained such an equivocal attitude that it is hard to tell whose hands he is playing into. He has been on one side and then on the other—with the colored people and then with the whites, till there is no telling where he is now.”

“Elly, you are unfair. That man is just as true as steel; he is solid gold all through. He is with the side that is right, that is all, only he has more courage to speak out than some of us have. I reckon the fact is that the right hasn’t always been the colored side. I’m afraid it hasn’t, though we’ve had so much the worst chance since we’ve had a chance at all, and such an outrageous list of grievances to remember, and to bear, that it isn’t an ordinary man that can look at things fairly here.”

Now, I have a mind to think there is something serious in this matter, and that there will be more and more as election approaches. The white men at Baconsville are awful mad, because our Militia Company has been reorganized lately, and has been preparing for the centennial Fourth of July. One would think they expected to be massacred in their beds; and so they go to work and do things that might make every nigger mad at them. Sensible, isn’t it?

“They are just raving, the white men are, some of them, and they do talk dreadfully. Old man Bob Baker there, gets into a passion whenever he sees us drilling on Market street. He hates to see a nigger he has hunted in the swamps before the war, and his dogs couldn’t catch, or could, practicing the use of arms with a State gun in his hands, and the Union flag over his head. He is like a mad bull, and “the stars and stripes” is the red rag that sets him a roaring and tearing up the ground.”

Here Watta, the speaker, slapped his companion’s shoulder, and both broke into a loud laugh.

“He has got an idea,” he resumed, “that all the roads within five miles of his plantation belong to him, I reckon, by the way he swears whenever he meets or passes the Company. I tell the boys to give the flag an extra spread whenever he is in sight, and we have it out.”

“It is the flag of the Union that you carry, and you are the National Guards of South Carolina, too,” replied Elly.

“Well, it is cutting to the old rebel and slave-hunter!” he continued. His occupation is gone, gone forever; and I don’t suppose he or his trained blood-hounds take kindly to such cheap game as possoms. There is a mighty sight of brag and bluster about these southern whites, though they’ll dodge quick enough at sight of a United States musket with a Yankee behind it. They hav’n’t forgotten their whipping yet.”

“Yes, but they’ll dodge back again just as quick, when the musket and Yankee soldier are withdrawn, and they are fast forgetting the past; and this centennial year and celebration are unwelcome reminders of it which they would like to resent.”

“Well, yes, I reckon so. You see the mention of the rebellion as one of the hard strains which the Union has survived cannot well be avoided, and so the “red rag,” as you call it, is in their faces pretty often if they take a newspaper, or steal the reading of one. There are only five white men, ‘gentlemen,’ who call upon me regularly to get the reading of my papers, free of course, and call me a ‘nigger.’ They don’t take a single paper themselves, nor buy one, nor say ‘thank ye’ for mine; nor always think to ask if I have read it myself.

“Ah, there she comes! right on time;” and Elly closed and pocketed his gold watch, while the train approached the platform.

“You’ll see, Jesse? Please get that name out of him, and I’ll put the rascal through for threats; though I’m not afraid of him. Good day,” and with the grace of a courtier he waved adieu to his friend, as the train moved away.

He was soon comfortably seated, and gazing out at the window. He was very well dressed, in strong contrast with a large majority of his race in the southern States. His tall shining hat lay beside him upon the crimson plush cushion of the seat, leaving his crisp and glossy frizzed hair the only covering of his shapely head.

Among the occupants of the car were many “northerners” returning from winter residences in Florida.

“We talk of the receding foreheads and projecting jaws of the African,” said a lady sitting opposite, in a subdued tone to her masculine companion, “but just imagine those two men with hair and complexions exchanged,” indicating Elly and a man in the seat immediately in front of him, who was in a double sense, a fair specimen of southern “poor white trash.”

“‘Now, deil-ma-care about their jaws,

The senseless, gawky million,’

“As Burns says,

‘I’ll cock my nose aboon them a’,’

“For I’m bound for dear New England, away from this land of rags and dirt, slatterly ways, lazy habits, flowing whiskey and tobacco, narrow brows and wide mouths, and people of all imaginable shades, from ebony to cream-color or white,” replied the gentleman. “If you like to continue studying and comparing these faces, do so; but don’t suggest it to me, for I long to be where the very air is not darkened with—‘nigger, nigger’ and my ears shall rest from the sound of their uncouth voices.”

“Their voices are expressive. You should call out the smooth tones.”

“But I can’t always. I’m sure I can’t forget the night of our arrival at Jacksonville,” he continued, “Thirty, weren’t there fifty black men standing near that train, all barking their loudest for passengers? Yes, you may reprove me, I know these don’t sound like the words of an abolitionist. But I am one, I insist; but if upon oath describing that sound that greeted our arrival in that city, I must say the voices of ‘thirty yelping curs;’ and to pass through among them, with their grabbing for one’s baggage, and those frightful sounds in one’s ears, and the knowledge of the unsettled state of the country—the antagonism between the races—I’d as lief—well, I don’t know what I wouldn’t choose!”

“Yes, but if, when that big-mouthed, two-fisted fellow grabbed your satchel, you, instead of striking him with your cane and umbrella, had looked kindly into his great-rolling eyes, and mildly said you preferred to walk and carry it yourself, I think he would have dropped it as quickly, and more quietly, and been more likely to remember you kindly. I remember quite similar scenes in the North, with Irish hackmen. But we have outgrown them; and so will the South, and the negroes out-grow these scenes; and for me, the more I see these colored faces, the more that is intelligent and agreeable I see in them.”

Elly’s face had been singularly bright and cheerful before over-hearing this colloquy; but then a change came, and presently he leaned out of the window, gazing at a large dilapidated mansion (it could not worthily be called a ruin,) which stood some rods from the railroad.

Many a day he had played about the door of a poor little cabin in its rear, or ran at the bidding of his young mistress as she walked in a small grove the train was just then entering; or had held the bridles for the gentlemen mounting at the door of “the great house,” watching well their movements, least, as is the habit of some men to cut their dogs with their whips and laugh at their yelps and leaps, they should thus enjoy an exhibition of his agility.

Under that great tree, in the edge of yonder cornfield, his mother writhed under the lash, for complaining that her task was too heavy; and obliged to witness the rising of the great welts upon her naked back, his father had snatched the instrument of torture from the hand that wielded it, and on an attempt being made to dispossess him of it, had dealt the overseer a smart blow across the back of his hand.

Then had followed a gathering of “the hands” from that and neighboring plantations, to witness the “maintenance of discipline,” and Elly’s father—a valuable specimen of plantation stock—was made, under the cat o’ nine tails, a physical wreck.

Beside that old decaying cotton-house, now scarcely visible, his oldest sister was once hung up by her hands and severely whipped, because she preferred field labor by the side of the father of her child, who was called her husband, to what was called an easier life—in “the big house after Missus got sick, and was agwoine’ to die.”

Next, the train rattled over a long stretch of spiling though a cane-brake, where were familiar trees, under which Elly had paused for breath, and standing upon their knotted roots, listened to the baying of pursuing blood-hounds; and so vivid was his recollection of this, his first attempt to escape from slavery, that the sick, cringing, trembling feeling returned as he observed the bent canes leaning away from the half-submerged ties of the railroad track; an involuntarily moving of his feet upon the car floor, as if again seeking a footing upon their bent stalks, a semiconsciousness of present circumstances was restored, through which his mind leaped over the terrible capture and chastisement, and he seemed again to hear the sounds of the “Yankee Camp,” and felt the joy of his happy entrance there, a “Contraband of war,” but a chattel slave no longer.

Then came a realization of the inestimable service the “Yankee Governess” had rendered him when she stealthily taught him to read, and spurred his young master’s lazy efforts, by contrasting his acquirements with those of the listening slave boy.

Through that poor beginning, made in weakness and danger on the part of both pupil and teacher, when it was a crime, punishable by imprisonment in the State’s Prison, he had made his way to positions of honor and emolument.

What meekness, humility and honesty must not a man of such experiences possess, if, conning them over, pride did not lift up his heart, resentment make his arm restless, and a sense of robbery long-endured, make his present powerful position seem a providential opportunity for retaliation and self-reimbursement! From an abyss of enforced degradation and ignorance and despair he had emerged into the light and life of personal and political liberty, equality, respectability and honor; and the young master whose opportunities he once so earnestly coveted, and before whose absolute will he was forced to bow, now sued for favors at his hands, and found “none so poor to do him reverence.” Was ever the nobility of human nature put to stronger tests than in these two peoples?

“Good evening, Mr. Elly,” said a broad-browed, florid-faced, red-haired man in the aisle beside him.

“Good evening, Marmor, good evening;” was the hearty response. “Take a seat?” removing his hat to make room.

“I will gladly take the seat, if you will just step out and let me turn over the back of this one in front, so that we can have the use of the two sofas, for my feet are at their old tricks and troubling me a good deal. They are easier when I lay them up. One might as well personate ‘Young America’ in this Centennial year when it makes him more comfortable.”

“Mind you don’t get them too high now,” said Elly, as they seated themselves after the change, and he spread a newspaper upon the cushion before them, to protect it from Marmor’s boot-blacking. “You might share the misfortune of Ike Partington; and if all your brains should run down into your head, what would become of “The Times?” and Elly laughed and wriggled, in strange and silly contrast with his usually dignified manner.

“I don’t furnish brains for “The Times”, said Marmor, “I only publish it. But what is the campaign going to be, do you think?”

“Oh, of course we shall win.”

Marmor kept his eyes fixed upon his middle finger nail, which he was carefully cutting, and did not reply.

Elly scrutinized his face awhile, and then asked, “Don’t you think so?”

“I am not so positive as I wish I was.”

“You don’t think the colored voters of the State are going back on the party that gave them freedom, and the only one that will preserve it for them? They’ll all vote the Republican ticket, of course.”

“Yes, unless they are intimidated.”

“Now, Marmor, I’ve seen a hint—or what I take for one—in your paper; but I hope you don’t really think there will be trouble.”

“I am afraid there will be trouble. Hanson Baker told me the other day that there are fifteen hundred men ready and waiting to come there and break up the Militia Company in Baconsville, and that they are going to do it; and it is a frequent boast among the men—the white Southerners, I mean—that they will carry the election if they have to do it at the point of the bayonet. They can’t do it honestly, that’s shor’; but I’m afraid there will be trouble.”

A pause ensued, after which Marmor resumed. “I’m almost tired of this State, and if my business could be squared up I’d get away; but I shan’t be driven out. I wish the colored people had the spunk to emigrate to some of the idle western land. It is a heap better and richer than this here, by all accounts; and though it might be some colder, it would make them stronger and smarter, and they’d be heaps better off than they are here.”

“There are a great many talking about it, don’t you know—going by colonies? It would be a deal better than going to Africa. I shall go myself if the old Confederates ever get into power here again.”

“See you stick to that, Elly; and, as for me, I reckon I shall have to go by that time, or before. I was born in South Carolina, and shed my blood in defense of her (as I thought then), at Fort Sumter, got wounded there, and I was as good as any of them till I consented to accept a clerical office under a Republican administration; and then the old Confederates persecuted me and my wife, till I found out how it felt to others, and I have seen under what tyranny a man lives here. He dares not think for himself at all. I served under Hampton in the war, before I got my eyes open. Like most of the private soldiers, and plenty of commissioned officers, I was made to believe a lie, or I never would have raised a hand against the National Government in the world. I used to say just this way: If the No’th would only let us manage our State matters ourselves, and would let our slaves alone (you know I owned a few slaves), I didn’t care if the Territories and new States were free. But Lincoln, and Garrison, and Greeley shouldn’t come down here, and take our nigger property away from us; they shouldn’t be emancipated by the United States Government—the slaves shouldn’t. Enough others said the same, and dozens of our speakers said it on the stump and platform, and plenty of the great leaders were right there—consenting by their silence, if not saying the same things, when they knew well enough that these were just the principles of the Republican party—the ‘Unionists’ who elected Lincoln. What did we care for their ‘sympathy for the slaves,’ or their wishes for the ‘constitutional right’ to liberate them, so long as they admitted they hadn’t got it, and we knew they couldn’t get it short of a two-thirds indorsement by the States through a direct vote of the people? There was slave property enough in sixteen of the thirty-four States to make us pretty sure on that score, in addition to the interests of cotton manufacturers and sugar dealers in the No’th who wanted our products and no interruption of business. Then we had the Fugitive Slave Law for the return of our runaways.”

“But you know the Republican idea was that the new States coming in, being all free, they could at last secure the constitutional two-thirds.”

“Yes, at last” said Marmor, derisively, “at the last great day, while slave-owners had each a vote for three out of every five of his slaves without asking their assent. But our hot-headed course hastened emancipation about a hundred years; and now that it is over I’m glad of it, though it did cost an ocean of blood and treasure. Slavery cursed the whites as well as the blacks, and ought to. When I think of all I saw in that war—I got this difficulty in my feet there (moving them with a grimace), and of the horrible sufferings it brought on our people, and how those leading villains knew all the time that they were deceiving us, I can’t think what wouldn’t be too good for them! And when that war was over, and the No’th had us in her hand as helpless as a trapped mouse, she not only spared their lives, but gave everything back to them which they had forfeited; and now you hear them go on about the National Government and the northern people, especially any that come and settle among us and try to develop the resources of the State, in a way that is simply outrageous! You would think the South was the magnanimous patron of the stiff-necked and rebellious No’th. I verily believe the South would have liked the No’th better if it had put its foot upon her after she fell. Conquer your rebellious child or yield to his dictation without demur.

“There are some who know no such thing as equality. Somebody must be the ‘Boss’, in their practice.”

“But republican principles would not allow the government to hold these States as provinces,” remarked lawyer Elly.

“They should have been held as territories,” said Marmor, “consistently or not. My blood is German (my father emigrated from Germany to Charleston when a small boy), but it has got the South Car’lina heat in it. I’m for efficiency.”

“Nineteen-twentieths of what they call carpet-baggers, and make folks believe are just adventurers, are northern men, capitalists generally, who in emigrating did not leave their manhood behind. It matters not how heavy taxes they may pay, nor how long they remain in the State; if they vote the Republican ticket and maintain the principles and practice of equal justice for all men in the State, they are ‘carpet-baggers;’ and if they vote Democratic, according to the will of the confederate whites, though they vote ‘early and often,’ and at points far removed from each other, they escape the opprobious epithet.”