“No, not at all. Didn’t appear to notice ’em at all. Then the firing begun pretty soon down on the river-bank.”
“The white men down there are saying this morning that it was the Militia that begun the firing,” said Sam Pincksney.
“No? Why, they can’t say that! It sounded like right from, the river-bank,” said Tim Grassy, an intelligent-looking mullato, about thirty years of age, who was a brother-in-law of Springer.
“Well, I know the white men fired first, for just let me tell you,” said Ben, a younger brother of Tim Grassy.
“George Hansen was at our warehouse, (Ben was bookkeeper in Springer’s cotton warehouse,) and he told me there was going to be trouble, and he wanted me to go up to his plantation with him, and see his game chickens. But I told him I couldn’t get off. He told me he saw a great crowd of white men gathered up back there in the country. An hour after he left, squads of men commenced coming in, and half an hour after that I went into the armory for protection. The white men opened fire and kept it up as much as fifteen minutes, and maybe half an hour, before they gave the colored men a chance to fire at all. I know, for I saw it.”
“Did any white men get killed?”
“One, Merry Walter.”
“Then I suppose some of our people must have killed him!” said Uncle Jesse, sadly.
“Well, I don’t know,” said Mann Harris, who had sat quietly listening, though reputed the greatest talker in Baconsville, “they quarrelled among theirselves, some.”