Columbia, Tenn., October, 1903.
Tom was a sly, rollicking rascal of a darkey, with a catfish smile and a jaybird eye. He was ever ready for a laugh, a joke, a drunk, or a profession of religion. He would spend his nights as quickly in a bar-room as at a prayer-meeting, and by day he was equally as ready to battle for politics as for religion. But his strong card was his wonderful experience “endurin’ de wah,” whither he went as a body servant to “Marse John,” and his “hairbreadth ’scapes in the imminent deadly breach” would have put a flush of envy in the dusky cheek of Othello himself. But Tom’s fighting was now mostly under his tongue, and, like many who are yet wearing the blue and gray a full generation after all hostilities have ceased and all animosities should long ago have ceased with them, Tom’s war spirit increased as the square of the distance from the crack of the last cannon. From his own statements there could be no doubt that, besides actually participating in every battle of the civil war, the Confederate forces were maintained in the field as long as they were, entirely on account of his own skill and genius as a “furager.”
His other weakness was his habit of disputing upon questions theologic. In this he was peculiarly strong; for, if the discussion waxed hot, and he found he could not convince his hearer with words, he did not hesitate to smite the centurion’s ear, or bite off his nose; and as his war record among the darkies was already Achillean and his fistic abilities unquestionable, there were few who were willing to “’spute de p’int wid ’im.” His great argument was the efficacy of faith over work, and he was so scrupulously religious in his belief that he finally ceased to work altogether, while it required but the spirit of a July sun and a weedy garden to set him to arguing with renewed zeal.
Now, a man is what his beliefs make him; and so the effect of Tom’s belief developed one virtue truly apostolic; he took no thought for the morrow, what he should eat or drink; he carried no scrip in his purse, and, at the beginning of this story, he had not even a change of raiment.
But his staunch friend was “Marse John,” the old Judge, who had long been Judge of a Circuit Court in Alabama—so long “the memory of man runneth not to the contrary,” as the law books have it. The old Judge was a good man and a good Judge—so just that the poorest and the blackest negro, when jerked up before his bar, never failed, equally with the richest and the whitest man in the district, to get that justice to which he was entitled. Nay, more; for in the dignified old gentleman who looked down upon him, pitying him in his environments of ignorance and poverty, and scrutinizing the evidence brought out by the wily lawyers with an alertness that reminded one of an eagle on his eerie watching the sly maneuverings of a congregation of foxes below, the poor wretch often unexpectedly found a strong and stubborn friend. And if the evidence contained but the germ of a doubt in the prisoner’s favor, he promptly got the benefit of it, though often, to get it, the old Judge had to bring to bear in the case the guns of his own learned and analytical mind. As he grew older, he continued to fight for truth with a zeal that seemed to increase with the silver of his locks, and he would acquit innocence though the hangman’s rope was already around her neck.
The old Judge’s influence in the district was wonderful, as is always the influence of truth and strength. Though unpretentious and often silent, not all the preachers of the circuit could have spun the moral woof that was in the warp of his work.
Tom had belonged to the old Judge “befo’ de wah,” and had gone through that fiery ordeal with his master. There is a peculiarly strong bond existing, in the South, between the master and the servant who have thus faced death together. The world cannot show a similar instance where the tie of servitude was forged in the white heat of its destiny.
And so the old Judge now stood up for Tom through thick and thin, and while he openly lamented Tom’s worthlessness, secretly he never failed to come to his assistance when in trouble or supply him and his family with food when hungry. If Tom got in jail, he “saunt for Marse John,” who quickly bailed him out. If, in a religious scrimmage with another darkey, he adopted the warlike methods of Peter, and was fined for assault and battery, he “saunt for Marse John,” who, after listening to his tale, paid his fine before the Mayor; and turned him loose, to the terror and dismay of all the other darkies who differed from him religiously. If he even concluded that marriage was a failure (and the Chancery Court records will show that he did so conclude at least several times during the first thirty years after the war), he “saunt for Marse John,” who, after listening to his tale, must have concluded that the poor woman was entitled to a divorce, whether Tom was or not, as he never failed to go Tom’s security for the costs and the $15 lawyer’s fee—all that is required in the black belt of Alabama to enable two yoked-up darkies to separate, and then proceed to make themselves miserable again in another effort to solve the problem. This last act raised the old Judge among the gods in Tom’s estimation; there was nothing, he thought, Marse John couldn’t do. The man who could thus sunder bonds that God had joined together, possessed, in Tom’s opinion, a few Olympian attributes himself.
Therefore, Tom went on, in spite of the old Judge’s talks, admonitions, and even threats, until one day something happened. The grand jury returned a true bill against Tom for hog stealing. Now, the old Judge would do anything in the world for Tom outside of his own court, but when Tom got into that temple of justice, he found himself among the laws of the Medes and Persians—and he knew it. If that true bill, properly drawn up by the solicitor and signed by the foreman of the grand jury, had indicted the old Judge’s own son, he would have tried him as calmly as Brutus did his boys of old.
But if Tom was in great danger, he never troubled himself about it in the least. Throughout the trial he sat with the air of one who considered he was being highly honored to be tried by “Marse John,” and in the depths of his face was a secret exultation that foreshadowed a complete, a startling, and even a sensational exoneration.