He was a good cobbler, a fair tinker, a poor mason, a worse carpenter, a first-class fisherman. He worked at any and all of these trades with cheerful and indolent impartiality, just as he fiddled, and sheared sheep, and ploughed, and sowed, and raked, and harvested for his rich white neighbors; but when anyone asked him his real trade, he proudly answered, “I’s er pollertishun.”
He was indeed a politician, for he had held the highest political position that his State and race afforded: he had thrice been elected “Black Gov’nor” of Narragansett on “Nigger ’Lection Day”—not on account of his master’s great wealth and high position, as was in slavery times “Gov’nor” Aaron Potter; not for his military prowess, as was “Gov’nor” Guy Watson, who had served bravely at Ticonderoga and at the absurd capture of General Prescott; not, as was “Gov’nor” Prince Robinson, for his handsome person and stately appearance, for poor Cuddy possessed neither. He had been elected just as white governors frequently are elected nowadays—because he was a politician. His office, however, bore no salary and but few emoluments; but it conferred great honor and dignity, and through it he received many small favors. He was consulted as to the settlement of many petty disputes among his black brothers, and his decision was law. His office thus had a certain power, and commanded some respect among the white people, who through him could obtain small settlements and adjustments, and arrange many matters in their relations with the negroes, without the trouble of personal effort. Cuddy had the honor of having many of his legal decisions and political aphorisms and his abstruse financial opinions quoted at the white Governor’s table, where they had been received with much laughter, and some praise, also, for their shrewdness.
His election had been a scene of great festivity. On the third Saturday in June (on which Nigger ’Lection was always held) there gathered in the great oak grove on Rose Hill the black inhabitants, riding on saddles and pillions, in chaises and farm-wagons, in ox-carts even—men, women, and children—all in their gayest and finest attire, from all the towns around. At ten o’clock the canvass commenced. Weeks of “’lectureneerin’ and parmenteerin’” had roused great interest in the event, and at last the two rows of the male friends of the respective candidates were arranged in lines under the trees in the charge of two pompous marshals, while the women stood admiringly around. Cuddymonk, mounted on Colonel Gardiner’s gray horse, and wearing a fine coat and knee-breeches that had been given him by the colonel, with a great borrowed gold-laced cocked hat balanced on the back of his head, rode up and down the line flourishing a long sword that had been lent him for the occasion. And he kept quiet and order, that no one might change ranks after the counting began, or step from one end of the line to the other, and thus fraudulently increase the number of votes. When the counting was done the number of votes and successful candidate was announced. Cuddymonk’s election was received with tumultuous cheers and congratulations.
Only one event occurred to mar the dignity of this first election. As he was about to end his inauguration address with a glorious flourish and climax of ornate rhetoric, his defeated opponent called out, in a high, malicious voice, “Cuddy, yer calfs has got round in front!” Cuddy glanced down at his legs with apprehensive mortification. Alas! it was too true. Colonel Gardiner had given with the knee-breeches a pair of his fine long stockings: but as he was as sturdy and muscular as Cuddy was thin, and as the politician had even more “negative calf and convex shin” (as said Randolph of Virginia) than have most of his race, the colonel’s stockings hung in unsightly folds; that Cuddy’s wife, Rosann, remedied by thrusting into each stocking-leg a great roll of sheep’s wool. In the heat of “parmenteerin’,” and through constant friction against his horse’s sides, Cuddy’s woollen calves had indeed “got round in front.” In vain did he try, amid the jeers of his opponents, to replace the unsightly wads in a dignified and proper position; they refused to stay placed, and for the rest of the day, at the dinner and at the dance, the false calves hung in front of and under his sharp old knees, looking for all the world, in the gray, wrinkled stockings, like a pair of hornets’ nests under the eaves of a house.
It may plainly be seen that by virtue of his position old Cuddymonk was of the high aristocracy of Narragansett black society. He was also an aristocrat by birth. The blood of African kings ran in his veins, and a strong cross of Indian blood, that of old King Ninigret, showed in his high cheek-bones and coarse black hair. His skin, too, was far from black. As he sat in the clear sunlight on this May morning, his bare feet and hands and face were of a uniform glowing golden-brown color, as rich and cheerful, though not as orange-tinted, as a ripe pumpkin. The appearance of his head was, also, most unlike the wool-covered, low-browed, heavy-jawed cranium of a negro; for his half-curly, coarse hair grew on the back part of his head only, and stuck out in a great stiff, surrounding halo. The top and sides of his head being thus left bare gave to him the appearance of having an extraordinarily high and brain-developed forehead; and altogether these peculiarities caused him to bear a comical cranial resemblance both to the noble Shakespeare and a blue-haired, ring-crowned baboon. His teeth and eyeballs showed the brilliant, glittering white of the negro, not at all like the dingy black snags and reddish, inflamed eyeballs seen in the Indian. He wore a collarless and rather ragged white shirt, an ancient and much-worn long-tailed blue coat with brass buttons, the very coat which had been given to him by Colonel Gardiner to attire him fitly and gloriously upon his election as “Gov’nor.” But the garment having served through three terms of office (to say nothing of the many years it had faithfully covered the colonel’s back), was now degraded to every-day wear. Cuddy was also clad in a shapeless pair of loose yellowish tow trousers called “tongs,” that bore strong evidence not only of home spinning and weaving, but of home tailoring as well, if such unsightly great linen bags could be said to be tailored.
Cuddy regarded with much satisfaction a row of dilapidated beehives that stood by his door, whose busy inhabitants furnished to him the toothsome honey he so dearly loved, and which he could so readily and profitably sell when he could “spare” it. He looked with equal pride on a row of thriving okra-plants, whose long green pods would in midsummer make for him such succulent and nourishing soups, and would also be sliced into delicate pale green, six-rayed stars, and displayed for weeks on window-sills and door-stones and shed-tops and stone walls in his small domain, through sunny, windless days when the starry wafers would not be blown away, drying for his own winter use and to carry to Newport to sell. His only other crop was represented by a freshly turned plot of earth—a potato-field—which he had planted the previous day.
Cuddymonk stretched himself with delight in the sunshine, and thus spoke to his wife, Rosann, a gay-turbaned old woman, who was twice as fat and twice as black as he was:
“I tell ye, Rosann, ’tatoes an’ honey an’ okra is a tousan’ times better’n pigs; ye don’ have ter feed ’em, an’ tend ’em, and watch ’em eaten theirselves up. Dey jess grows an’ grows for nothin’. Ef more folks growed ’tatoes an’ okra in dis country, times’d be better’n dey is.”
Rosann did not answer him, she seldom did; and now her attention was called to a horse and rider that had turned from the main road and were advancing up the narrow lane that led to Cuddy’s house. Mounted visitors were not frequent at Cuddy’s humble home, even on gubernatorial business; and when he and Rosann saw that the horseman was no less a person than Constable Cranston, of North Kingston, they stared in open-mouthed amazement. No less astonished were they when the sheriff announced his errand—that he had come to arrest the “Gov’nor” for debt. Suit had been brought against him and judgment rendered, and his arrest was the next step.
For Cuddymonk, like many another philosopher and many another politician, was careless and even tricky in business matters, and had been accused by both black and white neighbors of “never paying fer nothing if he could help it.” That he should have been arrested for this special debt was to him most astonishing, and he denounced it as keen injustice. He thus protested to the sheriff: