“There’s a proof,” said the Northern proprietor who had recently come into possession, “of the evil influences of the old system. A man of any spirit was sure to be driven into revolt by slavery, and then you had a very dangerous nigger. Freedom makes a first-class hand of him.”
The case seemed clear and convincing; and, for myself, I was fully satisfied. During the next fortnight I remember often referring to it, in conversations with the old slaveholders, and always, as I thought, with clinching effect. But they all shook their heads, and said they knew that nigger too well to be hoaxed that way.
The next time I visited the plantation there was a manifest commotion among the hands, although they were working steadily and well. “It’s all along o’ that d——d reformed nigger of ours,” growled the overseer. “I’ll never give in to the new-fangled notions again. A nigger’s a nigger, and you only make a fool of yourself when you try to make anything else out of him!”
It seemed that, the previous Saturday, when the overseer came to give out rations, he discovered that the lock of his “smoke-house” had been tampered with, and that nearly half a barrel of mess pork, (costing, at that time, thirty-four dollars per barrel, delivered,) had been stolen. A little investigation revealed the loss of several gallons of whisky, and of sundry articles, from the store-room. He said little about it, but quietly made some inquiries; saying nothing, however, to or about the “reformed nigger.” But on Monday morning the boy failed to go out to work with the rest. Being asked the reason, he replied that “the niggers had been lying on him, saying he had stolen pork and whisky, and he wasn’t gwine to stay among no such set; he was gwine to leab de plantation.” The overseer told him that would be a breach of his contract; but he said he didn’t care, and privately told some of the hands that “he wasn’t afraid of the overseer nor of no other d——d white man arrestin’ him!”
An hour or two later, the overseer, on riding out to the plow-gang, found the fellow sitting there among them with a loaded gun in his hand. One of the drivers told him Philos had threatened to kill “two niggers on dis plantation ’fore he leave.”
“I never carried arms in the field afore in my life,” said the overseer, “but I rode straight back to the house then, and buckled on a ‘Navy-six’ under my coat. I ’spect, if that nigger had stayed there, holding up his gun, and lookin’ so sassy, I’d a shot him when I got back; but he suspected something, and put out. At night, however, the scoundrel came back, and fired off his gun back of the cabin where one of the drivers lives. He’s got two guns and a pistol, and the niggers is all afraid of him as death. One of the men he has threatened to kill is his own brother-in-law. He’s hangin’ ’round the place somewhar yet, tryin’, I suppose, to sneak off his clothes, and get his wife and some of the other niggers to go with him.”
I found, on careful inquiry, that the story was true in all its details. My model reformed negro had back-slidden, and proved a sad reprobate. He had been stealing whisky for weeks, by means of a false key, and had been selling it at nights and on Sundays, to the negroes at a wood yard, a few miles further down the river. He was enraged at being found out, and particularly at the negroes whom he suspected of having informed on him.
It is very rarely, indeed, that one negro will expose another. “They think it’s taking the part of the white man against their own people,” explained a Mississippi overseer. “If, by any chance, some house servant does tell you of the thefts of a hand, it will only be after exacting innumerable promises that you will never, never, on any account, tell how you found it out.”
In the case of the backslider, a warrant was at once procured for his arrest on the charge of theft. “The officer told me there was another law, recently passed, under which I could arrest and imprison him for carrying weapons on the plantation without my consent. He appointed me special constable to make the arrest, and promised me that if the boy would agree to go to work, after I’d had him shut up in jail three or four days, he’d waive proceedings; let me take him out and try him, and then arrest him again if he made any trouble. Fact is, this officer’s very much like the old provost marshal, last year. You just tell him exactly what you want done, and he’ll be very apt to do just about that thing.”
The remark may serve to illustrate how laws are administered, amid the difficulties of the present chaotic state of affairs, in most cases, when the subject race is involved.