It was astonishing (and to none more than myself) to witness the suddenness with which I was exalted from obscurity to distinction, and the readiness with which every living soul, upon being told my name, character, and reputation, remembered all about me and my misdeeds. "Yes," cried one worthy personage, shaking at me a fist minus two fingers and a half, "I have heerd of him often enough: he lives in New-York, and he sells sendary pictures, packed up between the soles of niggur shoes."—"Yes!" cried another, who had but one eye, "I have read all about him: he lives in Boston, keeps a niggur school, and prints sendary papers, a hundred thousand at a time, to set niggurs insurrecting." In short, they remembered not only all that the unworthy Joshua told them to my disparagement, but a thousand things that the imagination of one suggested to the credulity of another. It was in vain that I endeavoured to say any thing in denial or defence; ridicule and revilement, threats and execrations, were my only answers. It was clear, that by the time we reached the Mississippi, I should be the most important personage in America; and that, if my value as an article of merchandise was to be determined by the distinction I won on the road, my friends, Joshua and Samuel, would make their fortunes by the speculation. But it was not my fate to travel beyond the bounds of the Ancient Dominion.
It happened, that on this day an election was held in the district through which we were travelling, to return a representative to Congress, in lieu of one who had fought his way into the shoes of a chargé. All the world—that is, all the district—was therefore in arms; and men and boys, Americans and Irishmen, were making their way to the polls as fast and comfortably as two-mile-an-hour hard-trotting horses could carry them; and thither also, as it appeared, or in that direction, we were ourselves bending our course. As we advanced, therefore, we found ourselves gliding into a current of human bodies—honest republicans, moving onward to the polls, all of whom were ready to add their approval to my claims, or those the kidnappers made for me, to the honour of Lynchdom. The word was passed from one to another, that the Yankee cart contained the famous abolitionist, Zachariah Longstraw; they pressed around to look at and revile me, to discourse with the kidnappers on my demerits, and to express their delight that such a renowned member of the incendiary gang, as they called that class of conscientious people, should at last be on the road to justice.
And thus I was rolled along, attended by sundry groups, which grew fast into crowds, consisting of persons who rejoiced over my capture, and painted to my ears, in words uncommonly rough and ferocious, the fate that awaited me when arrived at my place of destination.
That place, as it chanced, was nearer than I either expected or desired. As the crowd thickened, the sounds of wrath and triumph increased, becoming more terrible to my auditories. A new idea came into the minds of the sovereigns. A villain, seven feet and a half high, mounted on a horse just half that altitude, who had a great knife-scar across his nose and cheek, and a dozen similar seams on his hands, rode up to the cart, and giving me a diabolical look, cried out "Whaw! what aw the use of carrying the crittur so faw? I say, Vawginnee is the place for Lynching, atter all. I say, gentlemen and Vawginians! I go for Lynching right off-hand. Old Vawginnee for evvaw!"
Loud and terrible was the roar of voices with which the throng testified their approbation of the barbarian's proposal. It was agreed I ought to be, and should be, Lynched on the spot. The kidnappers appealed to the justice of "Virginians," requesting them not to invade "the sacred rights of private property,"—"they could not think of giving up their prisoner for nothing; they meant him solely for the Louisiana market." But things were coming to a crisis, and that my conductors perceived. They whipped up to escape the throng; but in vain. The further they went, the more they became involved in the crowd, having now arrived at the village where the favourite candidate was stumping among his constituents, and promising them worlds of reform, retrenchment, and public virtue, provided they would send him to Congress. I could hear from my box (my friend Joshua having taken care to lock me up at the first sign of danger), as we entered the village, the distant cries of "Hampden Jones for ever!" mingled with those nearer ones of my persecutors, "Lynch the abolitionist!" and the loudly-expressed remonstrances of my friends against invasion of their rights, coupled with threats to have the law of any one who robbed them of their property.
But threats and appeals were alike wasted on the independent freemen of that district. Joined by the voters and others already assembled at the polls, who, at the cry of "Lynch the abolitionist!" had deserted their orator, to join in the nobler sport of Lynching, they increased in wrath and enthusiasm; and, stopping the cart and breaking open my prison-house, they dragged me into the light of day, one man calling for a pistol, another a knife, a third a rope, and a fourth a cord of good dry wood and a coal of fire, to "burn the villain alive." Such a horrible clamour never before afflicted my ears or soul. I saw that, abolitionist or not, it was all over with me; and so saw honest Joshua and Samuel, whose only solace for this unlucky interruption to their speculation, was a call some one generously made to take up a subscription for their benefit, seeing that it was "beneath the dignity of the chivalry of Virginia to cheat even a Yankee of what was justly his due."