Never have I seen that peculiar look but on three or four occasions similar to the one I am narrating, when I knew he was pondering upon the fatal curse that had cast its withering blight upon all around, until the manhood and humanity were crushed out of the people, and outrages such as the above were looked upon with complacency, and the perpetrators treated as respected and worthy citizens, and that he was realizing the great truth, that, however man might endeavor to guide this war to the advantage of a favorite idea or a sagacious policy, the Almighty was directing it surely and steadily for the purification of our country from this greatest of national sins.
But to return to my story. After sitting in the mood which I have described at such length, the General again turned to the prisoner, and said, in a quiet, subdued tone of voice—
"Mr. Landry, I dare not trust myself to decide to-day what punishment would be meet for your offense, for I am in that state of mind that I fear I might exceed the strict demands of justice. I shall, therefore, place you under guard for the present, until I conclude upon your sentence."
A few days after, a number of influential citizens having represented to the General that Mr. Landry was not only a "high-toned gentleman," but a person of unusual "AMIABILITY" of character, and was, consequently, entitled to no small degree of leniency, he answered that, in consideration of the prisoner's "high-toned" character, and especially of his "amiability," of which he had seen so remarkable a proof, he had determined to meet their views, and therefore ordered that Landry give a deed of manumission to the girl, and pay a fine of five hundred dollars, to be placed in the hands of a trustee for her benefit.
Beauties of the Peculiar Institution—A Few Well-substantiated Facts.
A Mr. P——, deceased, of Gallatin, Tenn., for years a slave-trader, had children both by his wife and her body-servant, a beautiful mulatto woman—thus making, generally, the additions to his family in duplicate. One of his illegitimate daughters—a beautiful, hazel-eyed mulatto girl—is now the waiting-maid of his widow. This bright mulatto girl is married to a slave belonging to a prominent member of Congress from Tennessee, and has a son, a particularly apt and intelligent boy, whom the rebel women used to send around the camps, head-quarters, and street corners, to obtain the latest news, and report the same to them. Although but eight years old, he was too shrewd to remain quietly a slave. When the daughter of a Federal officer opened a little school, to teach a few contrabands, he came, and learned very rapidly. But his intellectual growth was suddenly stopped by the interference of his grandmother, who followed him to the school one day, and dragged him from the room in a perfect rage, threatening to kill him if he ever dared enter a free-school again, at the same time declaring to him that "he was not President Lincoln yet."
Another instance: The wealthy and prominent Colonel G——, of Gallatin, Tenn., a very respectable and high-toned gentleman, who is reputed a kind-hearted and benevolent man, remarkably lenient toward his slaves, whose praise is in the mouths of our Northern soldiers for his kind hospitalities, finding that his slaves, in view of the coming difficulties, did not increase fast enough for profit, called them all together on the 1st of January, 1862, and said to them: "Now, wenches, mind, every one of you that aint 'big' in three or four months, I intend to sell to the slave-trader." He afterward chuckled over it, adding that it "brought them to terms." Comment needless.
In the fall of 1861, in Piketon, Ky., at the headwaters of the Big Sandy, were two families—one known as the Slone family, the other as the Johnson family. The slaves of the former were all liberated about seventeen years before, by a will, stipulating that they should remain with his wife and work the plantation while she lived. Mrs. Slone died about two years after her husband, and not only emancipated these slaves, according to the last will and testament of her deceased husband, but, as they had taken more care of the old lady in her declining years than her sons, she thought it but equitable and right to disinherit the sons and leave the remnant of a once large estate, reduced to $9,000, to the slaves. But the gloating avarice of her gambling sons, backed by a vile public sentiment, prompted these unnatural sons to attempt to break the wills of their father and mother. After litigating the case about twelve years, and having been defeated in the highest courts in Kentucky, they went back and set up a claim of $2,000 against their father's estate, when these despoiled slaves had to deposit the last of their estate as security, having been for more than twelve years thus harassed and perplexed by vexatious lawsuits. When the Union army under General Nelson came into that country, and had that trumpeted battle at Ivy Mountain, and our troops reached Prestonburg, twenty-five miles from Piketon, these hunted and plundered ones concluded that now was the time for them to escape to the "promised land." They gathered together their little all, cut fifty or sixty saw-logs, made a raft, loaded their worldly goods on it, and floated down the river. When they reached Prestonburg, General Nelson had them arrested, cut their raft to pieces, and sent them back to Piketon. Afterward, when our troops, under the intrepid Garfield, moved up the river, and made their head-quarters at Piketon, these tormented and persecuted ones were told that now they might avail themselves of the Government boats to go down the river and leave the land of their tormentors.
The Johnson family slaves were liberated, at the death of their owner, by a will, the writer and executor of which had run off into the rebel army, carrying it with him. A distant relative of Mr. Johnson, a worthless, shiftless, ignorant fellow, moved upon the plantation, and claimed not only the property, but the slaves. "When our troops were about leaving Piketon, the most intelligent of the Slone family asked of Captain H——, A. A. Q. M., the privilege of using a push-boat to transport the family down the river. Consent was given them, and, the next morning, the two families gathered together, the old and young, men and women and children, numbering fifty-nine souls, and started down the river. Colonel C——, commanding the post, had them arrested, and ordered them back. One of his own officers represented to him that these people had an order for the boat from General Garfield, and, becoming alarmed, he let them go upon their way. Soon, however, the biped hounds were on their track, in hot pursuit. Two slaves, married into these families, had escaped and followed this boat-load. Although their villainous masters had fought in the rebel army, they were furnished with passes to pursue their fleeing slaves, under the protection of the United States arms. These pursuers, weary and exhausted, stopped at a slave-trader's above Paintsville, where a large bend in the river enabled them to gain several miles by a cross cut, took horses, and arrived at foot of Buffalo Shoals just as the boat-load of fifty-nine frightened souls were going over it. They at once leveled their rifles, and ordered the boat to lie-to, supposing their slaves were aboard. They did so, and occupied a small vacant hut on the bank of the river, awaiting a Government boat that would be down on the following morning. Early the next morning, (Sunday,) two lewd fellows of the baser sort, pursuing them in a skiff, landed at the place of rendezvous, and were about to rush into the cabin, when the leader of the negroes stopped them, saying:
"Porter and Radcliff, you can't enter here; we have none of your slaves."