“Wretched man! go meet the Judge whose laws you have outraged; go encounter the reproachful spirits of those who, in life, you have irretrievably injured! You are a blot on the world; you must be put out of it. You must stand before your Almighty Judge, your God. He is a God of mercy to those who have shown mercy. But have you shown it? No! Still you must die!”
The latter expressions were, of course, not uttered by the negroes, but something very similar was said; and amid the shouts and execrations of the multitude, the wretched man was dragged out, and being shot down, a hundred weapons were plunged in his yet warm and writhing body ere he was thrown over the cliff to be food for the fowls of the air, which, in spite of the firing, had already settled on the body of the planter, once his superior, now his wretched equal.
The same scene was enacted with several others. In vain they pleaded for life, in vain they offered rewards—large bribes, freedom to some, the means of returning to Africa to others who had been brought over. The negroes laughed all offers to scorn. No promises were believed: too often had they been made and broken; too exquisitely cruel and barbarous had been the punishments inflicted on prisoners taken in former outbreaks, to allow them to lose the gratification of their present revenge.
Often, as this scene has occurred to my mind, have I thought of what would be the fate of the planters, and overseers, and other white residents in the Slave States of the American Union, should the negroes ever find an opportunity of revolting. What sanguinary massacres would take place! what havoc and destruction would be the result! Few men have a better right to speak on the subject than I have. I was born before that great country called the United States was a nation. When I could walk, they were part and parcel of England. I have talked with men who were engaged in active life before the great Washington saw the light; who fought against the French on the heights of Abraham, under the hero Wolfe, and aided to win one of the brightest of her jewels for the British crown. I, therefore, cannot help looking on the Americans in the light of children—dear relatives; and when I address them, I speak to them with love and affection. I say to them, take warning from the scene I have been describing; do not submit to the incubus of slavery a moment longer than you can avoid it. No sensible man expects you to throw it off at once; but every right-feeling, right-thinking man, does expect you to take every means and make every preparation for its abolition, as soon as that important work can be accomplished. The only means you have of effecting this object with safety to yourselves, and with justice to those beings with immortal souls now intrusted by an inscrutable decree of Providence to your care, is by educating them, by making them Christians, by preparing them for liberty, by setting them an example which they may hereafter follow. Teach them to depend on their own exertions for support—to govern themselves—raise them in the scale of humanity: treat them as men should men, and not as Christians so-called treat the hapless sons of Africa. Remember that the British West India Islands were brought to the verge of ruin, and numberless families depending on them were ruined, not because the slaves were made free, but because they were not properly prepared for freedom. Whose fault was that? Not that of the British Government, not that of the nation; but of the planters themselves, of the white inhabitants of the island. They refused to the last to take any steps to Christianise, to educate, to raise the moral character of the negroes; and of course the negroes, when no longer under restraint, revelled in the barbarism in which they had been allowed to remain, with all the vices consequent on slavery superadded.
Should these remarks be read by any citizens of the American Slave States, I trust that they will remember what Old Jack says to them. He has reason to wish them well, to love them, for he has received much kindness at the hands of many of their fellow-countrymen; and he repeats that they have the power in their own hands to remove for ever from off them the stigma which now attaches to their name. He does not urge them to do it in consequence of any pressure from without—not at the beck and call of foreigners, but from their own sense of justice; because they are convinced that they are doing their duty to God and man; and lastly, that they will be much better served by educated, responsible freemen, than by slaves groaning in bondage, and working only from compulsion. (See Note.)
But avast! I cry. I have been driving a long way from the scene I was describing. The negroes I have been mentioning were men who had been slaves, and had made themselves free, and we see the way they treated the whites whom they had got into their power. They were, it must be granted, savages, barbarians, heathens. Their people, who had been captured as rebels, had been treated by their white Christian conquerors with every refinement of cruelty which the malice of man could invent: they had been slain with the most agonising tortures; and yet these savages, disdaining such an example, merely shot their prisoners, killing them without inflicting an unnecessary pang. I cannot say that at the time, however, I thought that they were otherwise than a most barbarous set.
One after the other my companions were led out and shot, and treated as their predecessors. One, a sturdy Englishman, who had not been long in the country, it seemed, broke loose, and knocked down several of his guards. He fought long and bravely with them. Had he been able to get hold of a weapon, he would, I believe, have cut his way out from among them. As it was, his fists served him in good stead; and he had already very nearly cleared himself a path, when a shot from pistol struck him on the knee, and brought him to the ground. Still he struggled bravely; but the negroes, throwing themselves on him, completely overpowered him, and he was at once dragged up to the place of execution. Before he had time to look around, or to offer up a prayer to Heaven, a dozen bullets had pierced his body, and he who was but lately so full of life and strength was a pallid corpse! I scarcely like to describe the dreadful scene. Even now I often shudder as I think of it. I have seen men shot down in battle—I have beheld numbers struggling in the raging sea, which was about to prove their grave; but I never saw men in full health and strength waiting for their coming death without the means of struggling for life—I have never seen men deprived of life in so cool and deliberate a way—I have never so surely expected to be deprived myself of life.
Our numbers had now been dreadfully thinned; the captain, and I, and three others only remained alive. One of those had become a raving maniac, his mind had given way under the horror of death; but now he feared nothing; he laughed the murderers to scorn; with shouts of derision on his lips he was shot down. The next man was seized: calmly he walked to the spot, and he likewise fell. Will it be the captain next, or I, or the only other remaining prisoner? The latter was seized: he looked up to the bright blue sky; to the green woods, waving with rich tropical luxuriance of foliage; to the dark faces of the surrounding multitude; and then at us two, his companions in misfortune; and I shall never forget the look of anguish and terror I saw there depicted. He saw no help, no chance of escape; in another instant he also was numbered with the dead. Then, indeed, my heart sank within me, for I expected to be like those who were to mortal eyes mere clods of earth. But instead of seizing me, they approached the captain. Before, however, they could lay their hands on him, his bonds seemed as if by superhuman strength to be torn asunder, and up he sprung to do battle for life! The negroes literally sprung back as they saw him with amazement, and on he bounded towards their chief. No one tried to stop him, and in another instant he had thrown his powerful well-knit limbs so completely around him, that the negro, tall and strong as he was, was entirely unable to help himself.
While this scene was enacting I remember seeing another tall negro with a few followers coming along the causeway. When I saw what the captain had done, remembering also that my bonds could be easily slackened, I cast them off, and sprang after him; and so sudden were my movements, that before any of the astonished blacks could stop me, I had clung to the legs of the black chief as tightly as I ever clung to a top-gallant-yard in a gale of wind. The chief and his followers were so much taken by surprise, that no one knew what to say or how to act. The awe with which the captain had inspired them, and the supernatural mode, as it seemed, by which he had freed himself from his bonds, and freed me also, made them afraid of approaching lest he should destroy them or the chief.
The captain saw his advantage, and was not a man to lose it. His life depended on his resolution. The horror he must have felt at the scene just enacted made him resolve not to throw a chance away. As he held the chief in his vice-like grasp, with his arms pinioned down, he looked him fully in the face and laughed long and loudly.