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

"All cuss' bobbolitionist!" said Governor, with sovereign contempt – "don't b'leeb in 'm. Who says chain nigga in Vaginnee? who says cowhide nigga in Vaginnee? De fate ob de slave! Cuss' lie! An't I slave, hah? Who chains Gubbe'nor? who licks Gubbe'nor? Little book big lie!"

And "little book big lie!" echoed all, in extreme wrath. The parson took things more coolly. He rolled his eyes, hitched up his collar, stroked his chin, and suggesting the propriety of reading a little farther, proposed that "brudder Tom, who had an uncommon good hidear of that ar sort of print, should hunt out the root of the matter;" and lamented that "it was a sort of print he could not well get along with without his spectacles."

CHAPTER IX.

WHAT IT WAS THE NEGROES HAD DISCOVERED AMONG THE SCANTLING

Thus called upon, I made a second essay, and succeeded, though not without pain, in deciphering enough of the text to give me a notion of the object for which the tract had been written. It was entitled "An Address to the Owners of Slaves," and could not, therefore, be classed among those "incendiary publications" which certain over-zealous philanthropists are accused of sending among slaves themselves, to inflame them into insurrection and murder. No such imputation could be cast upon the writer. His object was of a more humane and Christian character; it was to convince the master he was a robber and villain, and, by this pleasing mode of argument, induce him to liberate his bond-men. The only ill consequence that might be produced was, that the book might, provided it fell into their hands, convince the bondmen of the same thing; but that was a result for which the writer was not responsible – he addressed himself only to the master. It began with the following pithy questions and answers – or something very like them – for I cannot pretend to recollect them to the letter.

"Why scourgest thou this man? and why dost thou hold him in bonds? Is he a murderer? a house-burner? a ravisher? a blasphemer? a thief? No. What then is the crime for which thou art punishing him so bitterly? He is a negro, and my slave."

Then followed a demand "how he became, and by what right the master claimed him as a slave;" to which the master replied, "By right of purchase," exhibiting, at the same time, a bill of sale. At this the querist expressed great indignation, and calling the master a robber, cheat, and usurper, bade him show, as the only title a Christian would sanction, "a bill of sale signed by the negro's Maker!" who alone had the right to dispose of man's liberty; and he concluded the paragraph by averring, "that the claim was fraudulent; that the slave was unjustly, treacherously, unrighteously held in bonds; and that he was, or of right should be, as free as the master himself."

Here I paused for breath; my companions looked at me with eyes staring out of their heads. Astonishment, suspicion, and fear were depicted in their countenances. A new idea had entered their brains. All opened their mouths, but Governor was the only one who could speak, and he stuttered and stammered in his eagerness so much that I could scarcely understand him.

"Wh-wh-wh-wh-what dat!" he cried; "hab a right to fr-fr-fr-freedom, 'case Gorra-matty no s-s-s-sell me? Why den, wh-wh-wh-who's slave? Gorra-matty no trade in niggurs! I say, you Pawson Jim, wh-wh-wh-what you say dat doctrine?" The parson was dumb-founded. The difficulty was solved by an old negro, who rolled his quid of tobacco and his eyes together, and said,

"Whaw de debbil's de difference? Massa Cunnel no buy us; we born him slave, ebbery nigga he-ah!"

Unluckily, the very next paragraph was opened by the quotation from the Declaration of Independence, that "all men were born free and equal," which was asserted to be true of all men, negroes as well as others; from which it followed that the master's claim to the slave born in thraldom was as fraudulent as in the case of one obtained by purchase.

"Whaw dat?" said Governor; "Decoration of Independence say dat? Gen'ral Jodge Washington, him make dat; and Gen'ral Tommie Jefferson, him put hand to it! 'All men born free and equal.' A nigga is a man! who says no to dat? How come Massa Cunnel to be massa den?"

That question had never before been asked on Ridgewood Hill. But all now asked it, and all, for the first time in their lives, began to think of their master as a foe and usurper. The strangely-expressed idea in the pamphlet, namely – that none but their Maker could rightfully sell them to bondage, and that other in relation to natural freedom and equality, had captivated their imaginations, and made an impression on their minds not readily to be forgotten. Black looks passed from one to another, and angry expressions were uttered; and I know not where the excitement that was fast awaking would have ended, had not our master himself suddenly made his appearance descending the bluff.

For the first time in their lives, the slaves beheld his approach with terror; and all, darting upon the timber, began to labour with a zeal and bustling eagerness which they had never shown before. But, first, the pamphlet was snatched out of my hands, and concealed in a hollow of the bank. Our uncommon industry (for even Parson Jim and myself were seized with a fit of zeal, and gave our labour with the rest) somewhat surprised the venerable old man. But as the timber was destined to contribute to our own comforts, he attributed it to a selfish motive, and chiding us good-humouredly and with a laugh, said, "That's the way with you, you rogues; you can work well enough when it is for yourselves."

"Dat's all de tanks we gits!" muttered Governor, hard by. "Wonder if we ha'n't a better right to work than Massa Jodge to make us?"

CHAPTER X.

THE EFFECT OF THE PAMPHLET ON ITS READER AND HEARERS

We had seen the last day of content on Ridgewood Hill. That little scrap of paper, thrown among us perhaps by accident, or, as I have sometimes thought, dropped by the fiend of darkness himself, had conjured up a thousand of his imps, who, one after another, took up their dwelling in our breasts, until their name was Legion. My fellow-slaves cared little now for singing and dancing. Their only desire, in the intervals of labour, was to assemble together below the bluff, and dive deeper into the mysteries of the pamphlet; and as I was the only one who could explain them, and was ready enough to do so, I often neglected my little friend Tommy to preside over their convocations.

Nor were these meetings confined to the original finders of the precious document. The news had been whispered from man to man, and the sensation spread over the whole estate, so that those who lived with the major were as eager to escape from their labours and listen to the new revelation as ourselves. Nay, so great was the curiosity among them, that many who could not come when I was present to expound the secrets of the book, would betake themselves to the bluff, to indulge a look at it, and guess out its contents as they could from the pictures. And by-and-by, the news having spread to a distance, we had visiters also from the gangs of other plantations.

It was perhaps a week or more before the composition was read through and understood by us all; and in that time it had wrought a revolution in our feelings as surprising as it was fearful. And now, lest the reader should doubt that the great effects I am about to record should have really arisen from so slight a cause as a little book, I think it proper to tell him more fully than I have done what that little book contained.

It was, as I have said, an address to the owners of slaves, and its object purported to be to awaken their minds to the cruelty, injustice, and wickedness of slavery. This was sought to be effected, in the first place, by numerous cuts, representing all the cruelties and indignities that negro slaves had suffered, or could suffer, either in reality, or in the imaginations of the philanthropists. Some of these were horrible, many shocking, and all disgusting; and some of them, I think, were copied out of Fox's Book of Martyrs, though of that I am not certain. The moral turpitude and illegality of the institution were shown, or attempted to be shown, now by arguments that were handled like daggers and broad-axes, and now by savage denunciations of the enslaver and oppressor, who were proved to be murderers, blasphemers, tyrants, devils, and I know not what beside. The vengeance of Heaven was invoked upon their heads, coupled with predictions of the retribution that would sooner or later fall upon them, these being borne out by monitory allusions to the servile wars of Rome, Syria, Egypt, Sicily, St. Domingo, &c. &c. It was threatened that Heaven would repeat the plagues of Egypt in America, to punish the task-masters of the Ethiopian, as it had punished those of the Israelite, and that, in addition, the horrors of Hayti would be enacted a second time, and within our own borders. It was contended that the negro was, in organic and mental structure, the white man's equal, if not his superior, and that there was a peculiar injustice in subjecting to bondage his race, which had been (or so the writer averred), in the earlier days of the world, the sole possessors of knowledge and civilization; and there were many triumphant references to Hannibal, Queen Sheba, Cleopatra, and the Pharaohs, all of whom were proved to have been woolly-headed, and as bright in spirit as they were black in visage. In short, the book was full of strange things, and, among others, of insurrection and murder; though it is but charitable to suppose that the writer did not know it.

There was scarce a word in it that did not contribute to increase the evil spirit which its first paragraph had excited among my companions. It taught them to look on themselves as the victims of avarice, the play-things of cruelty, the foot-balls of oppression, the most injured people in the world: and the original greatness of their race, which was an idea they received with uncommon pleasure, and its reviving grandeur in the liberated Hayti, convinced them they possessed the power to redress their wrongs, and raise themselves into a mighty nation.

With the sense of injury came a thirst for revenge. My companions began to talk of violence and dream of blood. A week before there was not one of them who would not have risked his life to save his master's; the scene was now changed – my master walked daily, though without knowing it, among volcanoes; all looked upon him askant, and muttered curses as he passed. A kinder-hearted man and easier master never lived; and it may seem incredible that he should be hated without any real cause. Imaginary causes are, however, always the most efficacious in exciting jealousy and hatred, In affairs of the affections, slaves and the members of political factions are equally unreasonable. The only difference in the effect is, that the one cannot, while the other can, and does, change his masters when his whim changes.

That fatal book infected my own spirit as deeply as it did those of the others, and made me as sour and discontented as they. I began to have sentimental notions about liberty and equality, the dignity of man, the nobleness of freedom, and so-forth; and a stupid ambition, a vague notion that I was born to be a king or president, or some such great personage, filled my imagination, and made me a willing listener to, and sharer in, the schemes of violence and desperation which my fellow-slaves soon began to frame. It is wonderful, that among the many thoughts that now crowded my brain, no memory of my original condition arose to teach me the folly of my desires. But, and I repeat it again, the past was dead with me; I lived only for the present.

A little incident that soon befell me will show the reader how completely my feelings were identified with my condition, and how deeply the lessons of that unlucky pamphlet had sunk into my spirit. My little playmate, master Tommy, who was not above six years old, being of an irascible temper, sometimes quarrelled with me; on which occasions, as I mentioned before, he used to beat me; a liberty I rather encouraged than otherwise, since I gained by it – though my master strictly forbade the youth to take it. Now, as soon as my head began to fill with the direful and magnificent conceptions of a malecontent and conspirator, I waxed weary of child's play and master Tommy, who, falling into a passion with me for that reason, proceeded, on a certain occasion, to pommel my ribs with a fist about equal in weight to the paw of a gadfly. I was incensed, I may say enraged, at the poor child, and repaid the violence by shaking him almost to death. Indeed, I felt for a while as if I could have killed him; and I know not whether I might not have done it (for the devil had on the sudden got into my spirit), had not his father discovered what I was doing, and run to his assistance.

I then pretended that I had shaken him in sport, and thus escaped a drubbing, of which I was at first in danger. The threat of this, however, sank deeply into my mind, and I ever after felt a deep hatred of both father and son. This may well be called a blind malice, for neither had given me any real cause for it.

CHAPTER XI.

THE HATCHING OF A CONSPIRACY

In the meanwhile the devil was doing his work among the others, and disaffection grew into wrath and fury, that were not so perfectly concealed but that my master, or rather his eldest son, who was of a more observant disposition, began to suspect that mischief was brewing; and in a short time it was reported among us that our master had marked some of us as being dangerous, and was resolved to sell us to a Mississippi trader who was then in the county. This was reported by a spy, a house-servant, who professed to have overheard the conversation, and who reported, besides, that our master and his son were furbishing up their fire-arms, and laying in terrible supply of balls and powder.

Now whether this account was true or not I never knew, and I suppose I never shall until I am in my grave. It was enough, however, to drive us to a phrensy, those in particular who had been indicated as the intended victims of the Mississippi trader; and the more especially, as those men had wives and children, from whom they were told they were to be parted. One of these was the blacksmith of the estate, who, being a resolute and fierce-tempered fellow, instantly began to convert all the old horseshoes and iron hoops about his shop into a kind of blades or spear-heads, which we fastened upon poles, and hid away in secret places. There were among us three or four men who had muskets, with which they used to shoot wild fowl on the river, there being great abundance at this season. These weapons were also put into requisition; besides which we stored away butcher-knives and bludgeons, old scythe-blades and sickles beaten straight, until we could boast quite an armory. And here I may observe, that the faster these weapons increased upon our hands, the more deadly became our resolutions, the more fierce and malignant our desires; until, having at last what we thought a sufficiency for our purpose, we gave a loose to our passions, and determined upon a plan of proceedings that may well be called infernal.

I believe that when we began to collect these offensive weapons we had but vague ideas of mischief, thinking rather of defending ourselves from some meditated outrage on the part of our master, than of beginning an assault upon him ourselves. But now, the armory being complete, and several cunning fellows, who had been spying out among the surrounding plantations, bringing us word that the gangs (so they sometimes call the whole number of hands on a farm) of most of them were ready to strike with us for freedom; another having brought us word that a great outbreaking had already taken place south of James river, which, however, was not true; a third reminding us that we were more numerous than our masters; and a fourth bidding us remember that the negroes had once, as the little book told us, been the masters of all the white men in the world, and might be again; I say, these things being represented to us, as we were handling our arms and thinking what execution we could do with them, we shook hands together, and kissing the little pamphlet (for which we had conceived a high regard), as we had seen white men kiss the book in courts of law, we swore we would exterminate all the white men in Virginia, beginning with our master and his family.

CHAPTER XII.

HOW THE SPOILS OF VICTORY WERE INTENDED TO BE DIVIDED

The chief men in the conspiracy were, by all consent, the fellow called Governor, of whom I have said so much before; Parson Jim, who, although a little in the background at first, had soon taken a foremost stand, and was, indeed, the first to propose murder; myself, – not that I was really very active or fiery in the matter, but because I had become prominent as the reader of the little book; Cesar, the blacksmith; and a fellow named Zip, or Scipio, who was the chief fiddler and banjo-player, and had been therefore in great favour with the family, until he lost it by some misconduct.

The parson having uttered the diabolical proposal I mentioned before, and seeing it well received, got up to make a speech to inflame our courage. There was in his oration a good deal of preaching, with a considerable sprinkling of scraps from the Bible, such as he had picked up in the course of his clerical career. What he chiefly harped on was that greatness of the negro nation spoken of before, and he discoursed so energetically of the great kings and generals, "the great Faroes and Cannibals," as he called them, who had distinguished the race in olden time, that all became ambitious to figure with similar dignity in story.

"What you speak faw, pawson?" said Governor, interrupting him, and looking round with the air of a lord; "I be king, hah? and hab my sarvants to wait on me!"

"What you say dah, Gub'nor?" cried Zip the fiddler, with equal spirit: "You be king, I be president."

"I be emp'ror, like dat ah nigga in High-ty!" said another.

"I be constable!" cried a fourth.

"You be cuss'! you no go for de best man!" cried Governor, in a heat: "I be constable myself, and I lick any nigga I like! Who say me no, hah? I smash him brain out – dem nigga!" Governor was a tyrant already, and all began to be more or less afraid of him. "I'll be de great man, and I shall hab my choice ob de women: what you say dat? I sall hab Missa Isabella faw my wife! Who say me no dah?"

"Berry well!" cried Scipio: "I hab Missa Edie" – that is, Miss Edith, the next in age, who was, however, not yet thirteen, and therefore but a poor little child.

"Brudder Zip," said Jim the parson, "I speak fust dah! The labourer is wordy ob his hiah – I shall put my hand to de plough, and I shall hab Missa Edie for my wife. Arter me, if you please, brudder Zip!"

"Hold you jaw, Zip," said King Governor to the fiddler, who was ready to knock the parson down. "You shall hab Massa Maja's wife, and you shall cut his head off fust. As faw de oder niggas he-ah, what faw use ob quar'lin? We shall have wifes enough when we kills white massas; gorry! we shall hab pick!"

And thus my companions apportioned among themselves, in prospective, the wives and daughters of their intended victims; and thus, doubtless, they would have apportioned them in reality, had the bloody enterprise been allowed the success its projectors anticipated. I remember that my blood suddenly froze within my veins when the conspiracy had reached this point; and the idea of seeing those innocent, helpless maidens made the prey of brutal murderers, was so shocking to my spirit that I lost speech, and could scarce support myself on my feet.

While I stood thus confused among them, the conspirators determined upon a plan of action by which, as far as I understood it, the houses of my master and his son, the two being previously murdered, were to be set on fire at the same moment, on the following night, and at the sight of the flames the slaves on several neighbouring plantations were to fall upon their masters in like manner: after which, the gangs from all the burnt estates were to meet at a common rendezvous, and march in a body against the neighbouring village, the sacking of which they joyously looked forward to as the first step in a career of conquest and triumph – in other words, of murder and rapine.

Who would have thought that a little book, framed by a philanthropist, for the humane purpose of turning his neighbour from the error of his way, should have lighted a torch in his dwelling only to be quenched by blood! I am myself a witness that the pamphlet was not one of those incendiary publications of which so much is said, as being designed for the eyes of slaves themselves, to exasperate them to revolt. By no means; it was addressed to the master, and of course was only designed for him. Why the pictures were put in it, however, I cannot imagine, since it may be supposed the master could understand the argument and exhortation of the writer well enough without them. Perhaps they were intended to divert his children.

The book, however, whatever may have been the object for which it was written, had the effect to make a hundred men, who were previously contented with their lot in life, and perhaps as happy as any other men ordained to a life of labour, the victims of dissatisfaction and range, the enemies of those they had once loved, and, in fine, the contrivers and authors of their own destruction.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE ATTACK OF THE INSURGENTS UPON THE MANSION AT RIDGEWOOD HILL

I said, that when the conspiracy reached the crisis mentioned before, I was suddenly seized with terror. I began to think with what kindness I had been treated by those I had leagued to destroy; and the baseness and ingratitude of the whole design struck me with such force, that I was two or three times on the point of going to my master, and revealing it to him while he had yet the power to escape. But my fears of him and of my fellow-ruffians deterred me. I thought he looked fierce and stern; and as for my companions, I conceited that they were watching me, dogging my every step, prepared to kill me the moment I attempted to play them false. It was unfortunate that my rudeness to Master Tommy had caused me to be banished the house; for although my master did not beat me, he was persuaded my violence in that case was not altogether jocose, and therefore punished me by sending me to the fields. Hence I had no opportunity to see him in private, unless I had sought it, which would have exposed me to observation.

The night came, and it came to me bringing such gloom and horror, that my agitation was observed by Governor and others, who railed at me for a coward, and threatened to take my life if I did not behave more like a man. This only increased my alarm; and, truly, my disorder of mind became so great, that I was in a species of stupid distraction when the moment for action arrived; for which reason I retain but a confused recollection of the first events, and cannot therefore give a clear relation of them.

I remember that there was some confusion produced by an unexpected act on the part of our master, who, it was generally supposed, designed crossing the creek to visit the major, having ordered his carriage and the ferry-boat to be got ready, and it was resolved to kill him while crossing the creek on his return; after which we were to fire a volley of guns, as a signal to the major's gang, and then assault and burn our master's dwelling. Instead of departing, however, when the night came, he remained at home, shut up with the overseer and young Mr. Andrews, his daughter's lover; and it was reported that they had barred up the doors and windows, and were sitting at a table covered with loaded pistols; thus making it manifest that they suspected our intentions, and were resolved to defend themselves to the last.

For my part, I have never believed that our master suspected his danger at all; he perceived, indeed, that an ill spirit had got among his people, but neither he nor any of his family really believed that mischief was intended. Had they done so, he would undoubtedly have procured assistance, or at least removed his children. The windows were barred indeed, and perhaps earlier than usual, which may have been accidental; and as for the fire-arms on the table, I believe they were only fowling-pieces, which my master, Mr. Andrews, and the overseer, who was a great fowler, and therefore much favoured by my master, who was a veteran sportsman, were getting ready to shoot wild ducks with in the morning.