Chapter IX: Containing a Difficulty (2)

"Friend!" cried I from my prison, seized with a sudden hope of escape, "the man tells thee a fib. If thee is an honest man and a lover of the law, I charge thee to give me help; for these men are villains, who have dragged me from my home contrary to law, and now have me fastened up by the legs."

"I say, strange-aw! by hooky!" cried the horseman, in very emphatic tones, addressing himself to my captor, as I saw through a crack, while his companion rode up to his assistance, "what's the meaning of all this he-aw? What aw you doing, toting a white man off in this style, like a wild baw?"

What a "wild _baw_" was I could not conveniently comprehend; but I saw that I had lighted on a friend, who had the power to deliver me from thraldom.

"My name," said I, "is Zachariah Longstraw, and I can reward thee for thy trouble."

"You hear him!" said my jailer, with all imaginable coolness. "Well now, darn it, if I must tell, it is Zachariah Longstraw, the famous Zachariah Longstraw. You understand!" And here he nodded and winked at the questioner with great significancy; but, as it appeared, all in vain.

"Never heard of the man in my life," said my friend, "and I've followed niggur-driving ever since I could hold a two-year-old bo' pig."

"What!" cried my jailer, "never heard of Zachariah Longstraw, the famous abolitionist?"

"_Abolitionist_!" cried the two horsemen together, and they cried it with a yell that made my hair stand on end. "Can't say ever heard the name, but reckon he's one of them 'aw New-Yorkers and Yankees what sends 'cendiary things down he-aw! I say, strange-aw! is it a true, right up-and-down, no-mistake abolitionist?"

"Darn it, I think you'd say so, if you had ever read the papers."

"Jist open the box then, and if I don't take the scalp off him, call me a black man!"

"You won't do no sitch thing, meaning no offence," said my jailer. "Didn't go to the expense to fetch him so far for nothing; and don't mean him for the Virginnee market. Bound down to Louisianee, stranger; that's the best market for abolitionists; seen a public advertisement offering fifty thousand dollars for fellers not half so bad. I rather estimate we'll get full price for our venture."

With that my jailers whipped up, and succeeded in putting a proper distance betwixt them and that ferocious person who had such a desire to rob me of my scalp.

17. CHAPTER XVII.

CONTAINING OTHER SECRETS, BUT NOT SO IMPORTANT.

Reader, if thou art an abolitionist (and, verily, I hope thou art not), thou wilt conceive the mingled wo and astonishment with which I listened to these words of the chief kidnapper--whose Christian name, by-the-way, was Joshua, though as for his surname, I must confess I never heard it--and appreciate, even to the cold creeping of the flesh, the terrible situation in which I was placed. I was an abolitionist--or, at least, my captors chose so to consider me, and they were now carrying me down south, to sell me on speculation. For this they had kidnapped me! for this they had fastened me up by the legs like a "wild baw!" for this--but it is vain to accumulate phrases expressive of their villany and my distresses. What mattered it to my captors if, after all, I was _no_ abolitionist? (for, of a verity, though opposed in principle to the whole institution of slavery, my mind had been so fully occupied with other philanthropic considerations that I had had no time to play the liberator)--it was all one to my captors. The genius which could convert a hemlock-knot into a shoulder of bacon, a bundle of elder twigs into good Havana cigars, and bags of carpet-rags into Bologna sausages, could be at no fault when the demand was only to transform a peaceable follower of George Fox into a roaring lion of abolition. I felt that they had got me into a quandary more dreadful than any that had ever before afflicted my spirit. I knew we were already far south of Mason's and Dixon's.

The moment my vile kidnappers slackened their speed a little, having ridden hard to escape the negro-drivers, I called a parley, in the course of which two circumstances were brought to light, which greatly increased the afflictions of my spirit. I began by remonstrating with the villains upon the wickedness, cruelty, and injustice of their proceedings; to which Joshua made answer, that "times was hard--that a poor man was put to a hard shift to get a living--that, for his part, he was an honest man who turned his hand to any honest matter-- that he knew what was lawful, and what was not--that he was agin all abolition, which was anti-constitutional, and clear for keeping the peace betwixt the North and South"--and twenty other things of a like nature, of which the most important was, a declaration that the good people of some parish or other in Louisiana had offered a reward of fifty thousand dollars for either of two individuals whose names I have forgotten, though they were very famous abolitionists, and although Joshua, to settle the matter at once, showed me their names in the advertisement, which he had cut from a newspaper.

"Friend," said I, "I don't see that these foolish people have offered any reward for _me_."

"Well, darn it, I know it," said Joshua; "but I rather estimate they'll give half price for you; and that will pay us right smart for the venture. For, you see, what they want is an abolitionist, and I rather estimate they're not over and above partickilar as to who he may be. Now I have heern tell of a heap of incendiary papers you sent down south to free the niggurs--"

"I never did any such thing!"

"Oh, well," said Joshua, "it's all one; them there sugar-growing fellers will think so; and so it's all right. And there's them runaway niggurs you Phil'delphy Quakers are always hiding away from their masters. I rather estimate we'll make a good venture out of you."

"What!" said I, "will you sell my life for money?"

"No," said the vile Joshua, "it's a mere trade in flesh and blood--wouldn't take a man's life on no consideration."

"Friend, thee shall have money if thee will permit me to escape."

"Well," said Joshua, with an indifferent drawl, "I estimate not. Abel Snipe told me you was cleaned out as clear as a gourd-shell."

"Abel Snipe!" said I; "is thee a friend of that villain, Abel Snipe?"

"A sorter," said Joshua; "or rather Sam is. Him and Abel was friends together at Sing--"

"Oh, blast your jaw," said Sam, speaking for almost the first time on the whole journey, for he had been, until then, uncommonly glum and taciturn; "where's the difference where it was? Says Abel Snipe to me, says he, 'If you want's an abolitionist, there's my old friend Zachariah; he's your true go.' And so, d'ye see, that's what made us snap you; for we was thinking of snapping another."

"Oh, the wretch! the base, ungrateful, hypocritical wretch!"

"Come, blast it," said Sam, "don't abuse a man's friends."

"Fellow," said I, "hast thou no human feeling in that breast of thine? Wilt thou sell me to violent men and madmen, who will wrongfully take my life?

"Think what thou doest! Hast thou no conscience? Thou art selling a fellow-being! Hast thou no fear of death and judgment? of the devil and the world of torment?"

"Oh, hold your gab," said the ruffian. "As for selling fellow-critters, why, that was once a reggelar business of mine; for, d'ye see, I was a body-snatcher. And I reckon I was more skeared once snapping up a dead body, than ever I shall be lifting a live one. You must know, I was snatching for the doctors, over there in Jarsey; for, d'ye see, I'm a Jarseyman myself: I reckon it was some fourteen months ago: it was summer. What the devil-be-cursed the doctor wanted with a body in summer, I don't know; but it was none on my business. So we, went, me and Tim Stokes, and the doctor, to an old burying-ground where they had just earthed a youngster that the doctor said would suit him. Well, d'ye see, when we came to the grave, up jumps a blasted devil, as big as a cow, or it might ha' been a ghost, and set up a cry. So we takes to our heels. But the doctor said 'twas a man's cry, and no ghost's. And so, d'ye see, blast it, we was for going back again, after having a confab; when what should we do but find a poor devil of a feller lying dead by a hole under a beech-tree. The doctor said _he_ would do better nor the other; and so, blast it, d'ye see, we nabbed him."

"Of a surety," said I, eagerly, "it was the beech-tree at the Owl-roost! and that was the body of poor Sheppard Lee!"

"Well, they did call him summat of that like; and they made a great fuss about him in the papers. But I'm hanged if I wasn't skeared after that out of all body-snatching."

"Friend," said I, "can thee tell me what the doctor did with that body?"

"Why, cut him up, blast him, and made a raw-head-and-bloody-bones of him. The doctor was so cussed partickilar, he wouldn't let us even knock the teeth out; though that was no great loss, for Jarseymen hasn't no great shakes in the tooth way."

Alas! what an ending for poor Sheppard Lee! His body subjected to the knife of an anatomist, his bones scraped, boiled, bleached, hung together on wires, and set up in a museum, while his spirit was wandering about from body to body, enduring more afflictions in each than it had ever mourned even in that unlucky original dwelling it was so glad to leave! I am not of a sentimental turn, and I cannot say that, as Zachariah Longstraw, I felt any peculiar sorrow for the woes of Sheppard Lee. Nevertheless, I did not hear this account of the brutal way in which his body had been stolen and anatomized, without some touch of indignation and grief; which, perhaps, I should have expressed, had not there arisen, before the brutal Samuel had quite finished his remarks on Jerseymen's teeth, an occasion to exercise those feelings on my own immediate behalf.

This was produced by the vile Joshua, who had then the reins, telling a brace of horsemen whom we met that he had "the great abolitionist, the celebrated Zachariah Longstraw, in his cart," and was carrying him to be Lynched in Louisiana; a confession that threw the strangers into transports of satisfaction, one of them swearing he would accompany my captors to the Mississippi, or to the end of the earth, for the mere purpose of seeing me get my deservings.

18. 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."

19. 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.

20. 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.