"No, no, Pomp," cried Stackridge, "not men like you—there are few like you anywhere."
"I wish there was more like him, and that I owned a good gang of 'em!" muttered the man Deslow.
"I don't," replied Withers, with a drawl which had a deep meaning in it; "twould be too much like sleeping on a row of powder barrels, with lighted candles stuck in the bung holes. Dangerous, them big knowin' niggers be."
Pomp did not answer for a minute, but stood as if gathering power into himself, with one long, deep breath inflating his chest, and casting a glance upward through the sun-lit summer foliage.
"You buy and sell men, and women, and children of my race. If I am not like them, it is because circumstances have lifted me out of the wretched condition in which it is your constant policy and endeavor to keep us. By your laws—the laws you make and uphold—I am this day claimed as a slave; by your laws I am hunted as a slave;—yes, some of you here have joined your neighbor in the hunt for me, as if I was no more than a wild beast to be hounded and shot down if I could not be caught. Now tell me what union or concord there can be between you and me!"
"I own," said Deslow,—for Pomp's gleaming eyes had darted significant lightnings at him,—"I did once come up here with Bythewood to see if we could find you. Not that I had anything against you, Pomp,—not a thing; and as for your quarrel with your master, I ain't sure but you had the right on't; but you know as well as we do that we can't countenance a nigger's running away, under any circumstances."
"No!" said Pomp, with sparkling sarcasm. "Your secessionist neighbors revolt against the mildest government in the world, and resort to bloodshed on account of some fancied wrongs. You revolt against them because you prefer the old government to theirs. Your forefathers went to war with the mother country on account of a few taxes. But a negro must not revolt, he must not even attempt to run away, although he feels the relentless heel of oppression grinding into the dust all his rights, all that is dear to him, all that he loves! A white man may take up arms to defend a bit of property; but a black man has no right to rise up and defend either his wife, or his child, or his liberty, or even his own life, against his master!"
Only the narrow-minded Deslow had the confidence to meet this stunning argument, enforced as it was by the speaker's powerful manner, superb physical manhood, and superior intelligence.
"You know, Pomp, that your condition, to begin with, is very different from that of any white man. Your relation to your master is not that of a man to his neighbor, or of a citizen to the government; it is that of property to its owner."
"Property!" There was something almost wicked in the wild, bright glance with which the negro repeated this word. "How came we property, sir?"