Amongst the foremost wuz Nick Burley, a low, brutal fellow, one of Col. Seybert’s overseers and boon companions.
He had wanted the office, and his friends greatly desired it for him, thinkin’ no doubt it would prove many times a great convenience to them.
But Felix won it honorably. He got the majority of votes and wuz honestly elected.
But Burley and his choice crew of secret Regulators could not brook such an insult as to have one of a race of slaves preferred to him, so they proceeded to mete out the punishment to him fit for such offenders.
THE LEADER.
They tore Felix from his bed, leavin’ Hester in a faintin’ fit, and the little child screamin’ with fright. Took him out in the swamp, bound him to a tree, and whipped him till he had only a breath of life left in him; then they put him into a crazy old boat, and launched him out on the river, tellin’ him “if he ever dared to step his foot into his native State agin they would burn him alive.”
And this happened in our free country, in a country where impassioned oritors, on the day set apart to celebrate our nation’s freedom, make their voices heard even above the roar of blatant cannons, so full of eloquence and patriotism are they, as they eulogize our country’s liberty, justice, and independence.
“The only clime under God’s free sky,” they say, “where the law protects all classes alike, and the vote of the poorest man is as potent as the loftiest, in moulding our perfect institutions. Where the lowest and the highest have full and equal civil and political rights.”