In the brush

by Hamilton W. Pierson

CHAPTER XIII.

STRANGE PEOPLE I HAVE MET IN THE SOUTHWEST.

I have met a great many very odd and strange characters in the Southwest. The peculiar life of the people developed their originality. They were not restrained by the laws and customs that control older and more established communities. Every man was a law unto himself. All that was unusual and peculiar in their natural characters grew in unrestrained luxuriance like the wild vines on their hill-sides and in their valleys. What any man or community might think of their actions or mode of life had the least possible influence in deciding what they should do or not do. The laws of fashion, generally so tyrannical, were utterly powerless with them. What any one else might think of the color, shape, or quality of a garment, had no effect upon them. They dressed entirely in accordance with their own notions of comfort. This same kind of independence characterized all their actions and their entire life.

I frequently passed the plantation of a very marked character of this peculiar type, who, by great energy and native shrewdness, acquired a large property, and became the owner of many slaves. His dress and personal appearance were such that strangers calling at his house on business often mistook him for a plantation "field-hand," and called on him to open the gate leading to his residence, or for any service they would expect from a slave. He could read and write, but his spelling was about as bad as possible. On one occasion he wrote an advertisement and took it to a printing-office. The proprietor, knowing his positive traits of character, told him as politely as possible that there were some mistakes in the spelling, which, with his permission, he would correct in printing the advertisement. The old man was as positive and unyielding in regard to his spelling as in regard to his dress and everything else, and would submit to no changes. That was his way of spelling, and his way was as good as anybody's way. It must be printed exactly as he had written it, or not at all. It was so printed; and in addition to the amusement it afforded to the people of that region, a copy was sent to a large museum in a Southwestern city, and was among the most amusing of all their curiosities.

In a long horseback-ride over a turnpike-road connecting two large Southwestern cities, I stopped to dine and feed my horse at a house of entertainment. Entering a small apartment that served for a sleeping-room for the family and a sitting-room for travelers, I met a sight very unusual in that region. I found the walls of the room covered with a large number of cheap lithographic portraits of the prominent statesmen and military heroes of the country. A very brief interview showed me that my host was "to the manner born," and a very striking and original character. At length I alluded to the portraits hanging about his room and said:

"You seem to be very fond of pictures, sir."

"I am a patriot, sir," he replied.

Feeling quite sure that I should get a positive opinion, without any sort of hesitation I said to him:

"And who, sir, do you think was the greatest man of all the Presidents, statesmen, and military and naval heroes whose portraits you have here?"

"Andrew Jackson, sir," was the prompt reply.

"Ah!" said I, "I see, sir, that you have the portrait of Washington. Was Andrew Jackson a greater man than George Washington, sir?"

"I tell you, sir," said he, "Andrew Jackson was the greatest man God ever made. He was a man of firmness—more firmness than Washington."

Greatly to my surprise, I had found lying open upon a bed in our sitting-room a copy of Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin," but recently published, the only copy I ever saw in that region. I made some inquiries in regard to it, and he told me he had bought it of a Jew peddler who had spent a night with him. He was very much absorbed in reading it.

"I tell you, sir," said he, "the man that wrote that book was a very smart man. They say 'twas a woman; but I tell you, sir, the man that wrote that book was a very smart man." In all our long conversation he did not give the slightest possible credence to the idea that the book had been written by a woman. His oft-repeated and invariable statement was:

"I tell you, sir, the man that wrote that book was a very smart man. They say 'twas a woman; but I tell you, sir, the man that wrote that book was a very smart man."

A large number of his slaves were passing in and out of the room, preparing our dinner. At length he said to me:

"I tell you, stranger, that is my greatest trouble. What is to become of these people when I am gone?"

I knew that the laws of the State forbade his emancipating and leaving them there, and so I said:

"I suppose you know that some masters are freeing their slaves and sending them to Liberia."

"I know that, sir," said he, "and I have told mine that I would free them all and send them there if they would go. But they have told me they would rather I would chop them into mince-meat than go there."

Their ears had been filled with such tales in regard to Liberia that this was their idea of the place. As I never saw the old man but this once, I do not know what became of him or his slaves.

In former chapters I have spoken of my visit to a celebrated watering-place. I met there some very strange characters. My sermon in a "ballroom" was preached at this watering-place. I found it much more of a resort for gamblers than clergymen. In the general suspension of travel on the Southern and Western rivers, on account of the low stage of the water, and other causes, the gamblers, who usually plied their vocation upon the river-steamers, congregated in large numbers at these Springs. The waters were famed for cleansing the system, and preventing malarious diseases. In addition to this improvement of their health, and preparation for the renewal of their usual employment on the steamers, and at the cities and towns along the rivers, they found many subjects upon whom to practice their arts successfully, among the numerous and often verdant visitors at the Springs.

Wishing to avail myself of the benefit of these waters, I spent some two or three weeks here, visiting meanwhile a large number of neighborhoods in the vicinity, in the prosecution of my labors. I witnessed here the most remarkable devotion to card-playing that I have ever seen or known. The principal sleeping-apartments for the hundred or more guests were in a long, low, log structure, but a single story high—a series of cabins—with a piazza along the whole front which served as the general promenade for the visitors. In going to and from my room, day after day, I passed a table standing upon this piazza, within a foot or two of my door, which was surrounded by card-players. The principal character at this table was an old, gray-headed man, apparently not less than seventy years of age. In the morning he always accompanied his wife to the dining-room, and, as they returned from breakfast, they separated at the door, and she went alone up the piazza to her room, and he walked down the piazza in the opposite direction, and took his seat at this card-table. It was the hottest July weather, and the old man took off his coat and vest, rolled up his shirt-sleeves above his elbows, and sat down and played cards, without any interval, until the first bell rang for dinner. He then went to his room and waited upon his wife to the table. As they returned, he parted with her at the door of the dining-room, as after breakfast, walked down to his card-table, disrobed himself, and took his seat as in the morning, and played without cessation until the first bell rang for supper. He then went to his room and waited upon his wife to the table as before. This was repeated, with unfailing regularity, day after day, and week after week. I was told that he was not a professional gambler. As I passed the table, which I was compelled to do every time I went to my room, there was not usually a great deal of money lying upon it at stake in the game—only "enough to keep up the interest and excitement." But sometimes there were piles of gold lying over the table, and they seemed to be gambling in earnest and for large amounts.

The devotion of this old man to cards or gambling was so remarkable that I confess I was somewhat surprised to see him enter the ballroom with his wife among the first of those who assembled to hear me preach on the Sabbath. I had preached at a court-house, a few miles away, in the morning, and returned here to address the people at four in the afternoon. There was a general attendance of the visitors, including the well-known professional gamblers, and all gave me as respectful a hearing as I could desire. I was furnished with a Bible for the occasion, but there was no hymn-book. I expected to resort to the expedient of "lining out" some familiar hymns, which was the most frequent method of singing in this region. But the old card-player came forward to the table where I was sitting, and handed me an Old School Presbyterian hymn-book, which I had seen his wife bring into the ballroom, and which she sent up for my use, as she saw there was no hymn-book on the table. Some months after I recognized the aged couple in a large city congregation to which I was preaching, and was afterward told by its honored and beloved pastor that the old man was one of the most regular and attentive attendants at his church, and that his habits as I have described them were widely known. His manner was so apparently reverential, and his attention so marked, that strangers preaching there often got the impression that he was one of the elders of the church. So strange and paradoxical are the "characters that make up the world."

Among the visitors at the Springs was one who was a very wealthy man, a large slaveholder, and a very great invalid. He was a cripple, with one limb much shorter and smaller than the other, and was compelled to use two crutches to walk at all. As I saw him mingling with the visitors, I observed that he was profane, rollicking, genial, and exceedingly social in his nature. I do not now remember how I became acquainted with him, or whether or not I was introduced to him at all. But from the first he attached himself to me, and sought my company. If I sat down alone upon the piazza, he would come and take a seat near me, and we engaged in long conversations. I explained to him in the greatest detail the work in which I was engaged, and the operations of the American Bible Society at home and abroad. I described to him the Bible House in New York, and the process of making Bibles—commencing with the printing of them in the higher stories, and passing them through different hands from story to story below, until they reached the depository, well-bound and beautiful specimens of the art of book-making. I told him of the wealth and business character of the men who acted as managers of the society, and gratuitously supervised and controlled all its operations. Thoroughly irreligious in all his training and associations, my statements were new to him, and he was greatly interested in them. He thought the whole thing was "grand" and "magnificent," and was enthusiastic in his commendations of me and my work. When I was absent for a day or two for the purpose of meeting the people of some neighborhood at a week-day appointment, he was among the first to meet me on my return to the hotel, and inquired with the greatest interest as to the success of my labors. In our repeated interviews I talked with him frankly, freely, and fully, in regard to his own spiritual condition, urged him to make religion a personal matter, yield his heart to Christ, and live henceforth for the glory of God, and the good of his fellow-men. The openness of his nature and the frankness of his expressions upon this subject were remarkable. His belief in the Bible was implicit. He did not seem to have a shadow of doubt in regard to its truth. He told me that, from the nature of his disease, he was liable to die at any moment, and if he died he knew he should be lost. He did not seem to have a particle of doubt on this subject. Sometimes, in deep consciousness of the struggle within him, he would say:

"The trouble with me, sir, is, that I have no stability—I just go with the crowd I am in. When I am with a man like you, I wish I was a Christian. I would give the world to be a Christian. But when I am with W—— and G——" (naming the chief gamblers at the hotel) "and their crowd, I am just carried away with them. I can't help myself. If I could always be in the company of men like you, I believe I could be a good man and a Christian."

I prayed with him in my room at different times, and gave him all the instruction and encouragement in my power.

On learning from me that I was a native of the State of New York, and was familiar with the free States, he had a great many questions to ask in regard to them. He had never been out of the slave States. He inquired particularly in regard to the schools, and whether there were any schools where colored boys could be educated. I gave him the name of Oberlin and other schools that then admitted colored students. He told me that he had been confined to his bed seven years; that the greater part of the thigh-bone of one of his limbs had come out; that his body-servant had nursed, washed, and taken care of him like a baby all this time; and that in reward for these services he had offered to grant him and his two boys their freedom, and give the boys a good education. "But," said he, "I don't hire any overseer now. He is my overseer, and that makes him the biggest nigger in T—— County, and he says he 'don't want no freedom,' but he would like to have his boys sent to school. Now, sir, if you will find any school in the North that will take them, I will send them to school just as long as there is any use of their going."

I afterward wrote to several institutions on the subject, and sent their replies to him at his home. He was very anxious to know positively if he could send them to the State of New York, and said: "I can not send them to Illinois or Indiana, and I can not understand how they can be sent to New York. They are all free States." I told him that Illinois and Indiana had passed laws prohibiting colored persons coming into those States, but New York had not. He then wanted to know why this was so, and I told him that one reason was, that New York was so much farther from the slave States, and less likely to be overrun by free colored people. He at length became satisfied upon this point, a very important matter with him, as the sequel will show.

On one occasion, in explaining to him the nature of my Bible-work, and the extent of the territory committed to my supervision, he interrupted me with—

"That will include T—— County, my county. You must certainly come and see me when you reach that part of the State, and stay with me while you are in that region."

I thanked him for his invitation, and told him that I should be certain to call on him. This invitation was often repeated, and renewed with special earnestness when we separated. A long time elapsed before I visited all the intervening counties, organized or reorganized Bible societies, preached and "lifted collections" in the more important churches, ordered Bibles from New York, secured the appointment of colporteurs, and completed all the arrangements for a thorough canvass and supply of the counties. But after several months I reached T—— County; and, as my friend resided some distance from the county-seat, I completed all my arrangements for the supply of the county before making him my promised visit. This accomplished, I mounted my fleet horse and rode several miles to his residence. His welcome was as warm, cordial, and hearty as words and acts could make it. A long-absent brother could not have been received with greater demonstrations of joy. After I had laid aside my leggins and spurs, washed myself, and a troop of big and little house-servants, who were rushing about eager to render some service in welcoming me to their master's hospitalities, had brushed me and properly cared for all my wants, and the commotion created by the arrival of a stranger at a large plantation had somewhat subsided, my host said to me:

"The blue-grass in my pastures is knee-high to your horse. Now just stay with me a few weeks, and let your horse run there. The weather is hot; you are a hard worker. You need rest, and your horse too. It will do you both good. Just stay with me, and I will kill my biggest, fattest turkeys, and give you the very best that the plantation affords."

I thanked him for his cordial welcome, told him that I could not spare so much time, but would stay with him as long as I possibly could.

He then inquired after my plans for the supply of his county with Bibles. I told him that I had spent the previous Sabbath at the county-seat, and gave him the names of all the men that had been elected as officers of the County Bible Society, and of the colporteurs that had been chosen to canvass and supply the county. He knew them all, and approved the choice that had been made. I then said:

"I have ordered a large supply of Bibles from New York, and I am quite sure I can depend upon the people of the county to meet the expenses of this work."

"Yes," said he, thrusting his hand into his pocket, and taking out and opening his pocket-book, and handing me a bill, "there is twenty dollars for T—— County"; and, handing me another bill, "There is ten dollars for the world."

I was very much gratified with his appropriation of the money, as I saw that, in my conversations with him, I had given him a clear idea of the local or home work and the general or foreign work carried on by the American Bible Society.

A bountiful supper followed, and the evening passed very pleasantly and rapidly in conversation; with many reminiscences of our life at the Springs, and the various persons we had met there. At length he ordered the Bible brought forward, and the servants summoned for prayers. A large number, including the house-servants, and their husbands and children who lived in the kitchen and other adjacent buildings, were soon assembled. The master and myself were the only white persons in the group. He sat near me in a large chair, thin, pale, and sickly, his two crutches lying across his legs, and seemed profoundly interested and impressed. With a stillness that was almost motionless and breathless, and with a fixed, an earnest, an excited attention, such as I have never seen, only as I have seen it in many similar groups, they all listened while I read to them a portion of the blessed Word of God—that Word that I have found so potent to soothe and cheer and bless the most ignorant and the most oppressed—and then we all bowed together before our common Father, and in language as simple as I could command I earnestly besought his blessing to rest upon them all, and commended master and slaves to his compassionate care and love. As, after the lapse of so many years, the long-closed chambers of memory open at my bidding, and, recalling this scene, I for the first time commit it to pages that can be read by others, it all stands revealed before me, so vivid, so present, so unspeakably tender and precious in its memories, that again and again I have been compelled to lay down my pen and wipe the fast-falling tears that would flow as I have lived over again the golden, glorious hour thus spent in communing with God and comforting his enslaved and suffering poor. The same divine power comes down upon me now, while I write, as when I knelt in the midst of that dark group, melting my soul with a tenderness so inexpressibly sweet, and irradiating my whole being with a joy so unearthly that I can but exclaim with the poetess:

"Tell us if the gleams of glory,
Bursting on us when we pray,
Are not transient, blest revealings
Of our home, so far away;
Loving glances of our Father,
Sent to lure our souls away."

A delightful night's rest was followed by a most beautiful day. A morning stroll revealed to me the character and extent of my host's plantation. His residence was a large brick house, standing in the midst of a grove of forest-trees, and presented a most neglected, not to say dilapidated, appearance. A great many panes of glass had been broken from the windows; the doors were out of order; it had been unpainted for many years; the fences, out-buildings, and everything about it had a "tumble-down" look, and all presented about as "shiftless" an appearance as ever distressed the soul of a neat and thrifty Miss Ophelia. If my memory is not at fault, the plantation contained one thousand acres. It was as rich, productive, and beautiful land as I have ever seen. It lay in the heart of one of the finest tobacco-growing regions in the United States. The stock, most of which was "blooded," and of the finest quality, presented noble subjects for the pencil of a Rosa Bonheur, as they were feeding in his large pastures, where the blue grass was up to my horse's knees. The buildings I have already described sadly marred a landscape of exceeding beauty. This was the paternal estate. He had lived with his parents until their death, and, being the youngest son and an invalid, they had given him the homestead, providing liberally for the other members of the family, who lived in adjoining counties and were very wealthy. The place was cultivated by his own slaves, who, including old and young, I think must have numbered nearly or quite a hundred.

Shall I describe the household?

My host was unmarried. I do not know his age. I remember that his hair was so much frosted that it was decidedly iron-gray; but I am sure that it must have been prematurely so, on account of the great suffering he had endured. His housekeeper was a large, fat, gross-looking negro woman, one of his own slaves. But she was more than his housekeeper—she was the mother of his children. Here was one of those strange, unaccountable, revolting alliances—far more common than the great world has ever dreamed—that set at defiance the laws of God not only, but all other laws—where the one least attractive of all upon the plantation becomes the master's unholy choice. It hardly required the second look to detect among the groups of colored children that were playing about the yard four who bore to their father the double relation of children and slaves. The two eldest were girls, probably six and eight years old, and they had his light gray eyes, his double chin, and, indeed, all his features much more strongly marked than is usual where both the parents are either white or black. In their color, his white blood preponderated very largely over that of the mother; their hair indicated their African parentage much more positively than their skin. The two boys were much darker than their sisters, and the features of their father were less strongly though indisputably marked. The youngest was a handsome little fellow not more than three or four years old.

Here, then, to any one who had seen but a tithe of what had fallen under my observation in years of horseback-riding where I had been in constant communication with masters and slaves, was the full explanation of the intense interest and anxiety of my host in regard to the schools and laws in the free States. Here was a mind agitated with the most terrible conflicts, the most excruciating anxieties, that ever raged in the human heart. Here were the pangs of a guilty conscience in regard to the past; and all the instincts of a father moved to their profoundest depths in behalf of his children, who were legal slaves. He knew, even better than I did, the unutterably terrible future that awaited them as slaves. He knew not only the possibilities but the probabilities in regard to the fate of his daughters, which the laws and the customs of society rendered doubly sure. It was to a mind thus agitated and distressed that I had brought the sweet message, "The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin." It was to a spirit thus moved that I unfolded the fullness and the freeness of the forgiveness and salvation purchased by the sufferings and death of the "Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world." It was to one thus involved and entangled in the meshes of sin that I spoke of a Deliverer from its thralldom and power. O wondrous message! Often as I have looked into the faces of the vilest of the vile, I have been thrilled and startled at the sound of my own voice as I have proclaimed to them: "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool."

No wonder that he listened intently, and that his eyes often filled with tears, as I sat long at his bedside, where he was compelled to lie the greater part of the time, endeavoring to instruct him and lead him to Christ. If I were to repeat all the strange questions that he asked and that I answered—questions the like of which I never heard of being propounded to a minister of the gospel before—they would be far more strange and startling to my readers than anything I have written. No wonder that he esteemed and loved me as he did! Probably no clergyman had ever treated him with that consideration or instructed him with that care and earnestness that I had.

Possibly if I had known as much of his character as I afterward learned, I should have been less enthusiastic and hopeful in my efforts to instruct him and lead him to Christ. But it has been one of the incidents of my long wanderings and extended intercourse with strangers, that I have made the acquaintance of negro-traders, slave-hunters, gamblers, and other like characters, enjoyed their hospitality, prayed with and for them and their families, and given kind and hopeful words of instruction, where those who knew these people best had little heart or hope to put forth such efforts in their behalf. At times I have been permitted and rejoiced to learn that such labors have been attended with the happiest results.

When I asked the officers of the Bible Society the way to the residence of my friend, and told them of my promise to make him a visit, the strange, blank expression upon their faces told me plainly that his home was not a resort for clergymen. Their silence on the subject was far more expressive than the few ejaculations of surprise that were uttered. No wonder that he took such strange ways of manifesting his affection and regard. Once he called a servant and gave directions to have two white shoats thoroughly washed in soapsuds, and driven up to the front door for me to look at. He told me he had sent to Marshall P. Wilder, near Boston, Massachusetts, for a pair of white pigs and a pair of chickens, which with the freight had cost him a large sum, which he named, but which I have forgotten. He was anxious to gratify me by seeing them in the best possible condition. Indeed, he seemed never to forget that I was his guest, and he was constantly striving to do all in his power for my entertainment, and to render my stay with him as pleasant and protracted as possible. Very often he would repeat what he said to me so frequently at the Springs:

"If I could only have none but good people for associates, I believe I could be a good man. But I haven't got a bit of stability. I am just carried away by the crowd I am with. If I could only have you here, I believe I could be a Christian. If you will only stay here and preach for us, I will give the ground for a church and help build it, and I will bind my estate for a part of your salary after I am dead and gone, as long as you will stay. The trouble is now, if we do go to church, any one else there might just as well get up and preach as the man that does preach.[2] You are an educated man, and I believe you are a good man; and then you are a gentleman. If they would only send such preachers into this country, I tell you they would take the crowd. My mother was a Baptist, and I believe she was a good woman, and if I was fit to belong to any church, I should like to join the Baptist Church on her account. But I don't care very much about that. You are a Presbyterian, and if you will only come and start a Presbyterian church, I will do everything for you that I say."

When the hour for dinner arrived, we two alone sat down to a table that fully redeemed the promise of the night before. We had as nice a turkey as ever tempted the appetite, and a superabundance of other dishes, "the best that the plantation afforded."

As I could only make a brief stay with my friend, I was anxious to leave something with him that would, if possible, deepen his religious impressions, and give him the instruction that he so much needed, after I had gone. Sitting at his bedside, I gave him Rev. Newman Hall's "Come to Jesus"—a few copies of which I usually carried in my saddle-bags. I expressed to him my very high appreciation of the little work, and, in order so to enlist his interest in it that he would not fail to read it after I had left him, I told him how very highly it was esteemed by the late General John H. Cocke, of Virginia, whom I had known some years before, while superintendent of the colporteur operations of the American Tract Society in that State. My host was of an old Virginia horse-racing, sporting family, and his pride in the old State insured his attention to anything I would say in regard to so distinguished a Virginian. So I proceeded:

"The General had a magnificent estate in Fluvanna County, Virginia—was President of the American Temperance Union, was prominently identified with many of our national benevolent institutions, and was withal very fond of doing good in a genial, quiet way. On one of his visits to Richmond, Miss Jennie Taylor, daughter of his old friend Rev. Dr. Taylor, of the Union Theological Seminary in Prince Edward County, had recently been married; and, while attending to his business, he ran into the store of her husband to congratulate him. The bride was a great favorite with him, as she was with a very large circle of the best people in the State, who loved her for her own and her honored father's sake. As the General was about to leave, he said:

"'I wish to make you and your bride a very valuable present,' and handed him a tract of four pages.

"'Thank you,' said he, and immediately took from his desk a copy of 'Come to Jesus' and said, 'Please accept that in return, General, and don't fail to read it.'

"But a few days after this the General was in the city, and called again at the store, and said:

"'Where can I get copies of that little volume, "Come to Jesus"? I am delighted with it, and must have a quantity for distribution.'

"'I order them by the hundred copies from the Tract Society in New York,' was the response, 'and always keep a supply on hand to give away as I have opportunity.'

"The General soon procured a supply, and he had so many proofs of their great usefulness—so many of those to whom he gave them expressed their gratitude, and testified to the great benefit they had received from their perusal—that he ordered them again and again, and scattered hundreds of them over the country."

"How can I get a lot of them?" said my host, quite fired with the missionary spirit by this recital. I told him that I knew of no nearer place than the depository of the American Tract Society at Cincinnati, Ohio, which was several hundred miles distant. He would not rest until I had written out for him the address of Seely Wood, the depositary, and given him full instructions how to order them. On my next annual visit to the county I found several copies of "Come to Jesus" in the family of a Presbyterian elder, living near the county-seat, and, inquiring of him how he obtained them, he said:

"I found a package of them addressed to me at the post-office, and the postmaster said they had been left there by Mr. ——" (my host), "and that he left several other packages there addressed to Rev. Mr. ——, principal of the seminary, and the officers of the different churches."

The matter was an inexplicable mystery to him, and to all that received those packages. They knew him well, and afterward described his character to me as far different from that which usually pertains to a tract-distributor. They told me that he was a very cruel master, and that it was the general belief that he had shot and secretly paid the owner his price for a negro because he thought him too intimate with his housekeeper.

At night I preached in a small school-house, near his residence, to about a dozen persons who had assembled in response to the ringing of a small bell late in the afternoon and at the hour of assembling, the signal in all that region for preaching by a stranger, as I have elsewhere described.

Perhaps I should say that as a matter of form I asked my host, soon after my arrival, if he had received the letters I had forwarded to him, and sent his overseer's boys to school as he had proposed. He said he had received the letters, but gave some excuse or reason for not having sent them as yet. He ordered them dressed and called into the parlor for my inspection, that I might judge of their capacity for an education. This I afterward learned caused a great commotion in the "negro quarters," as they all thought I must be a "nigger-trader," and this examination was in reference to the price I would pay for them.

As my duties were very pressing, I spent but two nights with my host, and left him the next morning, with many thanks for his hospitality, and with earnest expressions of regret on his part—never to see him again.

A few months later I read a notice of his death in the papers, accompanied with this statement:

"He has left a very large estate. By his will he has freed a part of his slaves, and given his plantation and nearly all his property, including his slaves, to those he has freed."

On my next visit to the county-seat, I hitched my horse to a post, and before entering any other house went directly to the county clerk's office and asked him if he would do me the favor to allow me to read Mr. ——'s will. He at once produced the volume in which it was recorded, and I was about to read it, when he said:

"I have the original will here, if you would prefer to see that."

I thanked him, and he handed it to me. It was in his own handwriting. The spelling was very bad; as, for instance, I remember that "be" was spelt "bea," and a good many other words were as badly spelled. I have often been similarly astonished to find that men who had a great deal of general intelligence, and were most interesting talkers, were unable to spell the simplest sentence correctly. But the clerk told me that he recorded the will exactly as it was written, and that bad spelling did not vitiate any legal document. The will was very brief, and I remember its principal provisions as follows:

"I give and bequeath to ——" (the mother of his children) "her liberty from the hour of my death."

"I give and bequeath to her children" (here followed the names of her five children) "their liberty from the hour of my death."

"I give to ——" (another woman) "her liberty from the hour of my death."

"I give to my brother —— my fiddle."

"I give to my brother —— my kitchen furniture."

These brothers, when visiting him, had in joke asked him to make these legacies, saying that was all they wanted of his property, and he had in earnest told them he would give them what they asked. He also gave a little niece, the daughter of a sister, a valuable gold watch and chain, which he had promised her. He then gave a very small legacy—I think only three hundred dollars—to the mother of his children. Of her five children, only four were his. To these he gave all the remainder of his property, including plantation, blooded stock, slaves, money, etc., and directed that "they be sent to the State of New York," and placed in the best schools and thoroughly educated.[3]

Some ten days subsequent to the date of his will he had added a codicil. In this he gave the name and date of birth of each of the four children, in the order of their birth, and added, "These are my own children," and something like an appeal that they might be permitted to receive what he had left for them, and a hope that they might enjoy all that wealth and education could procure for them.

But the saddest, strangest thing about the will was its exceeding cruelty to the rest of his slaves. He directed that they all be sold for the benefit of his children that he had freed; and, that they might bring the greatest possible price, he ordered that they all be sent to New Orleans and sold upon the block at auction—not in families, but each one alone. His will directed his executor to advertise the "sale" for three months in the principal cities of the Southwest and South, so as to secure as large an attendance as possible of negro-traders and planters wishing to buy slaves. This horrified even his pro-slavery neighbors; for, had they been sold at home, many of them would have been bought by those who owned husbands and wives that were intermarried, or had "taken up" with them, and others would have been bought in the region, so that fewer families would have been separated. His own relatives, who would otherwise have inherited this large estate, were very wealthy, and he knew that they would spare no money in contesting his will. Hence he took precautions such as I have never heard of before to prevent its being broken. After he had got it written to suit himself—and I was told that he said he was inspired to write it—he made a large dinner-party, and among others invited the prominent physicians of the neighborhood. After the usual pleasures and excitements of such a party, as his guests were about leaving, he called the physicians to his room, and said:

"Gentlemen, you all know me well, and I wish to know if, from all that you have seen to-day, you think that I am competent to make my will?"

They all answered him in the affirmative. He then said, "I wish to know if this is your professional opinion, and that if called upon you will make oath to it?"

They again gave an affirmative response. He then took his will from his pocket, and said:

"Gentlemen, here is my will, written by myself, exactly as I want to dispose of my property, and I wish to sign it in your presence, and have you sign it as witnesses," which was done. Notwithstanding these precautions, I heard of the will as before the court, of the disagreement of the jury, and of the inability of the contestants to either establish or break it. I suppose the emancipation proclamation freed all the slaves before the case was settled by the courts. Fortunately for his children, I was told that he became so alarmed about them before he died, that he sent them to Ohio, and deposited money there for their support. Otherwise they would have remained slaves during the controversy in regard to the will. I have inquired after these children at Oberlin, at Xenia, and in many of the towns and cities of Ohio, but I have never been able to hear of them. I do not know whether or not they ever received the rest of the large estate which properly belonged to them.

I have written out these facts in all this detail, thinking that they would answer in part the query whether "anything strange or interesting did ever happen to a missionary," and also to reveal a type of character and civilization with which I have very often been brought in contact. I knew a free colored woman, and she was at the time a very liberal contributor to the American Bible Society, who told me that her own daughter had been educated at a fashionable school by her white father, and was the wife of an officer in the United States Army. She visited her daughter frequently near one of the largest Northern cities, not as her mother, but as her old nurse or "mammy." Her husband supposed that her own brunette mother had died in her infancy, and that she had been "raised" by this "mammy," as such nurses were called, and hence their great affection for each other.

Within a few miles of the home of my host, in an adjoining county, I knew two colored girls whose mother was "as black as the hinges of midnight," whose white father and master had left them and a legacy for them in the care of a sister, to whom he had willed a large number of slaves; and those two girls were trained to call their mother "Margaret," and always to treat her as their "mammy." This was in anticipation of their going North to a fashionable boarding-school, and that their mother might gratify her maternal instincts by accompanying them or visiting them without detriment to their social standing or prospects. It was well known in the Southwest and South for many years before the war that, notwithstanding the intense prejudice on account of color so universal in the North, many of the most expensive and fashionable boarding-schools received pupils from Cuba, South America, and other tropical countries, even if their skins were decidedly dark. As colored children were so rigidly excluded from nearly all the best schools in the country, many availed themselves of the exception thus made in behalf of those of foreign birth by placing pupils in these schools whose tropical lineage was only "asserted" by those who paid their bills. A few Northern schools, as is well known, have always received colored pupils. Bishop Payne, of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, President of Wilberforce University, Xenia, Ohio, told me during the war that before the war most of his students were those who had been born slaves and were educated by their white fathers. The stories that they have communicated to him of the sufferings they have endured as they have thought of the life to which their children were exposed if left in slavery—and as they have traveled with them up the river, and been compelled to witness the indignities to which they were exposed, as they were obliged to leave them on deck with the rough crowds of passengers, liable at all times to the basest insults, while they, as they valued their lives, dared not offer them a father's protection—would alone make a volume of painfully thrilling interest. Alas, that there were many thousands of such parents whose natures were so blunted that they cared as little for their offspring as the dumb beasts around them!

But I have said all and more than I had intended, though very far from all that I could say upon this subject, and will betake myself to more pleasant and congenial narrations of my labors in the Brush.

SUPPLEMENTARY FACTS.

In writing the foregoing chapter, I, of deliberate purpose, suppressed the name and place of residence of the person whose remarkable history I have given in so much detail. I wished to make the case less personal than representative of a state of society now happily passed away. I gave the facts as far as I had received them.

But, since reaching New York, and while reading the proof-sheets of this volume, I have received additional facts from the highest authority; and, as the case has become so celebrated, there is now no reason why I should withhold any of them.

In the year 1859, one year after my election to the presidency of Cumberland College, I one day made a very long horseback-ride in order to reach the residence and spend the night with the Hon. Francis M. Bristow, at Elkton, Todd County, Kentucky. Mr. Bristow was at the time serving his second term as a member of Congress from the third district. I was anxious to see him, from the fact that, in accordance with instructions from the maker of the above-named will, the executor had employed him and his son, a young lawyer who had recently opened an office in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, to defend the will in a suit that had already been instituted in the Circuit Court. I did not find the distinguished Congressman at home, but was so fortunate as to meet and spend the night with his son.

I have called several times, since reaching the city, upon the "junior counsel for the will," now the Hon. Benjamin H. Bristow, late Secretary of the United States Treasury, Washington, D.C.

The maker of the will was Mr. Lycurgus B. Leavell, of Trenton, Todd County, Kentucky. General Bristow informs me that the case was tried before Hon. Thomas E. Dabney, at a term of the Circuit Court, held at Elkton, Kentucky. The senior counsel for the will was Hon. Francis M. Bristow; the junior counsel, Benjamin H. Bristow and H.G. Petrie. The senior counsel for the contestants was the Hon. Gustavus Henry, the "eagle orator" of Tennessee; the junior counsel was James E. Bailey, late United States Senator for Tennessee. As the case was so very important, the jury was selected from the most prominent and honorable slaveholders in the county. Young Bristow and Bailey opened the case. It was ably contested, and of most extraordinary interest, but this is not the place to describe it. The jury were eleven for and one against sustaining the will.

The war soon came on; the slaves, including several who had recently been imported from Africa in the Wanderer, were freed by the emancipation proclamation; the contest was withdrawn, and the will established. The executor and his bondsmen were financially ruined by the war, and only a small part of the estate, some forty thousand dollars, reached the two surviving children to whom it was devised. One of them, a young lady, has recently graduated with distinguished honor, and the president and professors of the college speak of her in terms of the very highest praise.