The soldiers came round and listened. Joe saw that they were friends. The Judge stood speechless a moment.
"Joe," said the Colonel, "are you willing to go home with your master?"
"No, sah, I isn't."
"Judge Robertson, I don't think you can get that boy. If you think you can, there he is, try it. I shall have nothing to do with it," said the Colonel, casting a significant glance around to the soldiers who had gathered about them.
The Judge saw that he could not lay hands upon Joe. "I'll see whether there is any virtue in the laws of Kentucky," he said, with great emphasis.
"Perhaps, Judge, it will be as well for you to leave the camp. Some of my men are a little excitable on the subject of slavery."
"You are a set of nigger-stealers," said the Judge, losing his temper.
"Allow me to say, Judge, that it does not become you to call us nigger-stealers. You talk about nigger-stealing,—you who live on the sweat and blood of such creatures as Joe! Your dwellings, your churches, are built from the earnings of slaves, beaten out of them by brutal overseers. You hire little children out to brutes,—you clothe them in rags,—you hunt them with hounds,—you chain them down to toil and suffering! You call us thieves because we have given your Joe food and protection! Sir, I would rather be in the place of Joe than in that of his oppressor!" was the indignant outburst of the Colonel.
"Well, sir, if that is the way you men of the North feel, the Union never can be saved,—never! You must give up our property."
"Judge, allow me to tell you what sort of Unionism I have found in Kentucky. I have not seen a half-dozen who did not damn the President. You may put all the pure Unionism in Kentucky in one scale, and a ten-pound nigger baby in the other, and the Unionism will kick the beam. Allow me to say, further, that if the perpetuity or restoration of the Union depends upon my delivering to you with my own hands that little half-starved dwarf of a slave, the Union may be cast into hell with all the nations that forget God!"