Of course the whole group were intensely excited, and Aunt Phebe listened, shrieked, and prayed by turns; but Uncle Jesse was still firm in his first decision to keep inside the law.”
“There’s been heaps of threats, I know, enough to make a man intimidate of his shadow; but there’s a pile o’ bluster and brag in these old aristocrats; just like a barking dog though, he’ll never bite.”
“Heigh! but they be a biting now, sho,” said Sterns with a shrug.
“And then our folks ha’n’t always done right,” Mr. Roome continued. “It’s a new thing for us to make laws and be officers, and all that; and some thinks ’cause they make the laws, that they needn’t keep ’em; and some is mighty ambitious, and likes to pay off old scores through the laws. Now that a’n’t right, and it can’t do no good, nohow. Some laws has been made wrong, and some has been executed wrong, and it a’n’t reasonable to suppose that a man that has been a slave all his life, and ha’n’t had nothing to do ’bout no laws only to be lashed when his master has a mind to, is going to rise right up and know everything at once. And the masters that has been masters over us so long, I suppose it’s mighty hard for them to stand the nigger majorities in this State, and have the niggers that they used to have under them, just like that dog now, making laws for them, and in the offices. Well, now, we ought to think o’ these things, on both sides, and have patience and do the best we can, and keep inside the law. If the militia company and the white folks has got up a quarrel over there in Baconsville, and either of them is going to breaking the laws—well, I a’n’t going over there to join ’em in doing it! That is all.”
“But it’s the white folks that is breaking the laws; and I’m surprised that yo,’ Mr. Roome, a’n’t ready to help us against ’em. They’re all there, mounted and armed, and officered; and they says they shall have these men and their guns. The militia ha’n’t got guns enough there, and not scarcely no ammunition; and they’re just going to be massacred!”
“No! no!” replied Uncle Jesse, “that won’t be done. Them white folks know we’ve got a Governor and courts.”
“But there’s too many of ’em for the courts to stop ’em. There’s two or three thousand, all armed, and some of ’em is the biggest men in the State, the old aristocrats; and the Governor’s militia can’t do nothing against these Rifle Clubs yo’ know, these old confederate soldiers that served in the war. They’re all them, or the one’s they’ve trained up, are officering now.”
“I know, I know,” said Jesse, “but you know there’s the United States. The United States won’t see us killed off that way.”
“‘Cause the United States is too fur off to see it; and when we’re all killed, the United States can’t bring us alive again.”
“Why didn’t they just let them two young fellows go through that company in the first place on the 4th of July? It’s mighty provoking to see the niggers celebrating the 4th with the same flag they used to brag so much about ’fore the wa’, (though they have hated it ever since), and the State guns, and all! We’ve growed so big now, we can afford to stoop down to such little fellows as they’ve got to being. What’s the use o’ keeping up a quarrel when we’ve got to live together?”