“What! are you going to hang a man for stealing a watch?”
“O, yes,” said my informant, “we must be severe with these niggers, or we couldn’t live for them.”
“But he is a valuable-looking piece of property.”
“True, sir, but the State is obligated to pay one-half his value to the master, and he was appraised at sixteen hundred dollars,—so you see only one-half the loss will fall upon his master.”
All this was spoken with that serious business air which showed a real sympathy with the slaveholder who was about to suffer the loss of eight hundred dollars!
On account of my crippled hand and general debility, I was privileged to walk about the hall. There I could see the doomed man who was so soon to suffer the ignominious death of the scaffold. The keeper’s sympathy was altogether with the owner of the negro; but he congratulated himself in the master’s behalf by saying that, since the beginning of the war, negroes were poor sale, and that for the owner of this condemned one to get half his appraised value would be very consoling in the hour of trouble! One circumstance in connection with this incident gladdened my heart. On one occasion I overheard two men conversing with the negro in his cell. They were godly men, and had come to offer the sympathy of supplication in prayer. One of these visitors was gifted in a special manner. His pleadings before the court of heaven in behalf of his unfortunate fellow-man, were touchingly eloquent. He sang and prayed alternately, and with tearful eyes and tender tones, pointed the criminal to the Saviour who blessed the dying thief on Calvary. But all his instructions and persuasions seemed alike in vain. The stoic prisoner remained hard-hearted and unmoved.
I asked and obtained permission from the keeper to speak a few words to the man so soon to die. The conditions on which I obtained the favor were that my instructions should be given in the keeper’s presence.
Looking through the iron bars at my sinful but unfortunate auditor, I said,
“Do you believe that Christ died for all?”