It wuz a dangerous precedent, and not to be condoned. So it wuz nuthin’ oncommon if a colored man succeeded by hard work and economy in gettin’ a better house, and had good crops and stock, for a band of masked men to surround the house at midnight and order its inhabitants, on pain of death, to leave it all and flee out of the country before daylight.
And if they appealed to the law, it wuz a slender reed indeed to lean upon, and would break under the slightest pressure.
Indeed, what good could law do, what would decrees and enactments avail in the face of this terrible armed power, secret but invincible, that closed round this helpless race like the waves of the treacherous whirlpool about a twig that wuz cast into its seethin’ waters?
The reign of Terrorism, of Lynch Law, of Might aginst Right wuz rampant, and if they wanted to save even their poor hunted bodies they had learned to submit.
So, poor old men and wimmen would rise up from the ruins of their homes, the homes they had built with so much hard toil. Feeble wimmen and children, as well as youth and strength, would rise up and move on, often with sharp, stingin’ lashes to hasten their footsteps.
Move on to another place to have the same scenes enacted over and over agin.
The crops and stock that wuz left fell as a reward to the victors in the fray.
And if there wuz a pretty girl amongst the fugitives she too wuz often and often bound to the conqueror’s chariot wheels till the chariot got tired of this added ornament, then she fell down before it and the heavy wheels passed over her. And so exit pretty girl.
But the world wuz full of them; what mattered one more or less? It wuz no more than if a fly should be brushed away by a too heavy hand, and have its wings broken. There are plenty more, and of what account is one poor insect?
Many a poor aged one died broken-hearted in the toilsome exodus from their homes and treasures.