STRANGE PEOPLE I HAVE MET IN THE SOUTHWEST.
I have met a great many very odd and strange characters in the
Southwest. The peculiar life of the people developed their originality.
They were not restrained by the laws and customs that control older
and more established communities. Every man was a law unto himself.
All that was unusual and peculiar in their natural characters grew in
unrestrained luxuriance like the wild vines on their hill-sides and in
their valleys. What any man or community might think of their actions
or mode of life had the least possible influence in deciding what they
should do or not do. The laws of fashion, generally so tyrannical,
were utterly powerless with them. What any one else might think of the
color, shape, or quality of a garment, had no effect upon them. They
dressed entirely in accordance with their own notions of comfort. This
same kind of independence characterized all their actions and their
entire life.
I frequently passed the plantation of a very marked character of this
peculiar type, who, by great energy and native shrewdness, acquired
a large property, and became the owner of many slaves. His dress and
personal appearance were such that strangers calling at his house on
business often mistook him for a plantation "field-hand," and called on
him to open the gate leading to his residence, or for any service they
would expect from a slave. He could read and write, but his spelling
was about as bad as possible. On one occasion he wrote an advertisement
and took it to a printing-office. The proprietor, knowing his positive
traits of character, told him as politely as possible that there were
some mistakes in the spelling, which, with his permission, he would
correct in printing the advertisement. The old man was as positive and
unyielding in regard to his spelling as in regard to his dress and
everything else, and would submit to no changes. That was his way of
spelling, and his way was as good as anybody's way. It must be printed
exactly as he had written it, or not at all. It was so printed; and in
addition to the amusement it afforded to the people of that region, a
copy was sent to a large museum in a Southwestern city, and was among
the most amusing of all their curiosities.
In a long horseback-ride over a turnpike-road connecting two large
Southwestern cities, I stopped to dine and feed my horse at a house
of entertainment. Entering a small apartment that served for a
sleeping-room for the family and a sitting-room for travelers, I met
a sight very unusual in that region. I found the walls of the room
covered with a large number of cheap lithographic portraits of the
prominent statesmen and military heroes of the country. A very brief
interview showed me that my host was "to the manner born," and a very
striking and original character. At length I alluded to the portraits
hanging about his room and said:
"You seem to be very fond of pictures, sir."
"I am a patriot, sir," he replied.
Feeling quite sure that I should get a positive opinion, without any
sort of hesitation I said to him:
"And who, sir, do you think was the greatest man of all the Presidents,
statesmen, and military and naval heroes whose portraits you have here?"
"Andrew Jackson, sir," was the prompt reply.
"Ah!" said I, "I see, sir, that you have the portrait of Washington.
Was Andrew Jackson a greater man than George Washington, sir?"
"I tell you, sir," said he, "Andrew Jackson was the greatest man God
ever made. He was a man of firmness--more firmness than Washington."
Greatly to my surprise, I had found lying open upon a bed in our
sitting-room a copy of Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Key to Uncle
Tom's Cabin," but recently published, the only copy I ever saw in that
region. I made some inquiries in regard to it, and he told me he had
bought it of a Jew peddler who had spent a night with him. He was very
much absorbed in reading it.
"I tell you, sir," said he, "the man that wrote that book was a very
smart man. They say 'twas a woman; but I tell you, sir, the man that
wrote that book was a very smart man." In all our long conversation he
did not give the slightest possible credence to the idea that the book
had been written by a woman. His oft-repeated and invariable statement
was:
"I tell you, sir, the man that wrote that book was a very smart man.
They say 'twas a woman; but I tell you, sir, the man that wrote that
book was a very smart man."
A large number of his slaves were passing in and out of the room,
preparing our dinner. At length he said to me:
"I tell you, stranger, that is my greatest trouble. What is to become
of these people when I am gone?"
I knew that the laws of the State forbade his emancipating and leaving
them there, and so I said:
"I suppose you know that some masters are freeing their slaves and
sending them to Liberia."
"I know that, sir," said he, "and I have told mine that I would free
them all and send them there if they would go. But they have told me
they would rather I would chop them into mince-meat than go there."
Their ears had been filled with such tales in regard to Liberia that
this was their idea of the place. As I never saw the old man but this
once, I do not know what became of him or his slaves.
In former chapters I have spoken of my visit to a celebrated
watering-place. I met there some very strange characters. My sermon
in a "ballroom" was preached at this watering-place. I found it much
more of a resort for gamblers than clergymen. In the general suspension
of travel on the Southern and Western rivers, on account of the low
stage of the water, and other causes, the gamblers, who usually plied
their vocation upon the river-steamers, congregated in large numbers
at these Springs. The waters were famed for cleansing the system, and
preventing malarious diseases. In addition to this improvement of their
health, and preparation for the renewal of their usual employment on
the steamers, and at the cities and towns along the rivers, they found
many subjects upon whom to practice their arts successfully, among the
numerous and often verdant visitors at the Springs.
Wishing to avail myself of the benefit of these waters, I spent
some two or three weeks here, visiting meanwhile a large number of
neighborhoods in the vicinity, in the prosecution of my labors. I
witnessed here the most remarkable devotion to card-playing that I
have ever seen or known. The principal sleeping-apartments for the
hundred or more guests were in a long, low, log structure, but a
single story high--a series of cabins--with a piazza along the whole
front which served as the general promenade for the visitors. In going
to and from my room, day after day, I passed a table standing upon
this piazza, within a foot or two of my door, which was surrounded
by card-players. The principal character at this table was an old,
gray-headed man, apparently not less than seventy years of age. In
the morning he always accompanied his wife to the dining-room, and,
as they returned from breakfast, they separated at the door, and she
went alone up the piazza to her room, and he walked down the piazza in
the opposite direction, and took his seat at this card-table. It was
the hottest July weather, and the old man took off his coat and vest,
rolled up his shirt-sleeves above his elbows, and sat down and played
cards, without any interval, until the first bell rang for dinner. He
then went to his room and waited upon his wife to the table. As they
returned, he parted with her at the door of the dining-room, as after
breakfast, walked down to his card-table, disrobed himself, and took
his seat as in the morning, and played without cessation until the
first bell rang for supper. He then went to his room and waited upon
his wife to the table as before. This was repeated, with unfailing
regularity, day after day, and week after week. I was told that he
was not a professional gambler. As I passed the table, which I was
compelled to do every time I went to my room, there was not usually a
great deal of money lying upon it at stake in the game--only "enough to
keep up the interest and excitement." But sometimes there were piles of
gold lying over the table, and they seemed to be gambling in earnest
and for large amounts.
The devotion of this old man to cards or gambling was so remarkable
that I confess I was somewhat surprised to see him enter the ballroom
with his wife among the first of those who assembled to hear me preach
on the Sabbath. I had preached at a court-house, a few miles away, in
the morning, and returned here to address the people at four in the
afternoon. There was a general attendance of the visitors, including
the well-known professional gamblers, and all gave me as respectful
a hearing as I could desire. I was furnished with a Bible for the
occasion, but there was no hymn-book. I expected to resort to the
expedient of "lining out" some familiar hymns, which was the most
frequent method of singing in this region. But the old card-player
came forward to the table where I was sitting, and handed me an Old
School Presbyterian hymn-book, which I had seen his wife bring into
the ballroom, and which she sent up for my use, as she saw there was
no hymn-book on the table. Some months after I recognized the aged
couple in a large city congregation to which I was preaching, and was
afterward told by its honored and beloved pastor that the old man
was one of the most regular and attentive attendants at his church,
and that his habits as I have described them were widely known. His
manner was so apparently reverential, and his attention so marked,
that strangers preaching there often got the impression that he was
one of the elders of the church. So strange and paradoxical are the
"characters that make up the world."
Among the visitors at the Springs was one who was a very wealthy man,
a large slaveholder, and a very great invalid. He was a cripple, with
one limb much shorter and smaller than the other, and was compelled
to use two crutches to walk at all. As I saw him mingling with the
visitors, I observed that he was profane, rollicking, genial, and
exceedingly social in his nature. I do not now remember how I became
acquainted with him, or whether or not I was introduced to him at all.
But from the first he attached himself to me, and sought my company. If
I sat down alone upon the piazza, he would come and take a seat near
me, and we engaged in long conversations. I explained to him in the
greatest detail the work in which I was engaged, and the operations of
the American Bible Society at home and abroad. I described to him the
Bible House in New York, and the process of making Bibles--commencing
with the printing of them in the higher stories, and passing them
through different hands from story to story below, until they reached
the depository, well-bound and beautiful specimens of the art of
book-making. I told him of the wealth and business character of the
men who acted as managers of the society, and gratuitously supervised
and controlled all its operations. Thoroughly irreligious in all his
training and associations, my statements were new to him, and he was
greatly interested in them. He thought the whole thing was "grand" and
"magnificent," and was enthusiastic in his commendations of me and my
work. When I was absent for a day or two for the purpose of meeting the
people of some neighborhood at a week-day appointment, he was among
the first to meet me on my return to the hotel, and inquired with the
greatest interest as to the success of my labors. In our repeated
interviews I talked with him frankly, freely, and fully, in regard to
his own spiritual condition, urged him to make religion a personal
matter, yield his heart to Christ, and live henceforth for the glory
of God, and the good of his fellow-men. The openness of his nature and
the frankness of his expressions upon this subject were remarkable. His
belief in the Bible was implicit. He did not seem to have a shadow of
doubt in regard to its truth. He told me that, from the nature of his
disease, he was liable to die at any moment, and if he died he knew
he should be lost. He did not seem to have a particle of doubt on this
subject. Sometimes, in deep consciousness of the struggle within him,
he would say:
"The trouble with me, sir, is, that I have no stability--I just go
with the crowd I am in. When I am with a man like you, I wish I was a
Christian. I would give the world to be a Christian. But when I am with
W---- and G----" (naming the chief gamblers at the hotel) "and their
crowd, I am just carried away with them. I can't help myself. If I
could always be in the company of men like you, I believe I could be a
good man and a Christian."
I prayed with him in my room at different times, and gave him all the
instruction and encouragement in my power.
On learning from me that I was a native of the State of New York, and
was familiar with the free States, he had a great many questions to
ask in regard to them. He had never been out of the slave States. He
inquired particularly in regard to the schools, and whether there were
any schools where colored boys could be educated. I gave him the name
of Oberlin and other schools that then admitted colored students. He
told me that he had been confined to his bed seven years; that the
greater part of the thigh-bone of one of his limbs had come out; that
his body-servant had nursed, washed, and taken care of him like a baby
all this time; and that in reward for these services he had offered
to grant him and his two boys their freedom, and give the boys a good
education. "But," said he, "I don't hire any overseer now. He is my
overseer, and that makes him the biggest nigger in T---- County, and
he says he 'don't want no freedom,' but he would like to have his boys
sent to school. Now, sir, if you will find any school in the North that
will take them, I will send them to school just as long as there is any
use of their going."
I afterward wrote to several institutions on the subject, and sent
their replies to him at his home. He was very anxious to know
positively if he could send them to the State of New York, and said:
"I can not send them to Illinois or Indiana, and I can not understand
how they can be sent to New York. They are all free States." I told him
that Illinois and Indiana had passed laws prohibiting colored persons
coming into those States, but New York had not. He then wanted to know
why this was so, and I told him that one reason was, that New York was
so much farther from the slave States, and less likely to be overrun by
free colored people. He at length became satisfied upon this point, a
very important matter with him, as the sequel will show.
On one occasion, in explaining to him the nature of my Bible-work, and
the extent of the territory committed to my supervision, he interrupted
me with--
"That will include T---- County, my county. You must certainly come and
see me when you reach that part of the State, and stay with me while
you are in that region."
I thanked him for his invitation, and told him that I should be certain
to call on him. This invitation was often repeated, and renewed with
special earnestness when we separated. A long time elapsed before I
visited all the intervening counties, organized or reorganized Bible
societies, preached and "lifted collections" in the more important
churches, ordered Bibles from New York, secured the appointment of
colporteurs, and completed all the arrangements for a thorough canvass
and supply of the counties. But after several months I reached T----
County; and, as my friend resided some distance from the county-seat,
I completed all my arrangements for the supply of the county before
making him my promised visit. This accomplished, I mounted my fleet
horse and rode several miles to his residence. His welcome was as warm,
cordial, and hearty as words and acts could make it. A long-absent
brother could not have been received with greater demonstrations of
joy. After I had laid aside my leggins and spurs, washed myself, and a
troop of big and little house-servants, who were rushing about eager to
render some service in welcoming me to their master's hospitalities,
had brushed me and properly cared for all my wants, and the commotion
created by the arrival of a stranger at a large plantation had somewhat
subsided, my host said to me:
"The blue-grass in my pastures is knee-high to your horse. Now just
stay with me a few weeks, and let your horse run there. The weather
is hot; you are a hard worker. You need rest, and your horse too. It
will do you both good. Just stay with me, and I will kill my biggest,
fattest turkeys, and give you the very best that the plantation
affords."
I thanked him for his cordial welcome, told him that I could not spare
so much time, but would stay with him as long as I possibly could.
He then inquired after my plans for the supply of his county with
Bibles. I told him that I had spent the previous Sabbath at the
county-seat, and gave him the names of all the men that had been
elected as officers of the County Bible Society, and of the colporteurs
that had been chosen to canvass and supply the county. He knew them
all, and approved the choice that had been made. I then said:
"I have ordered a large supply of Bibles from New York, and I am quite
sure I can depend upon the people of the county to meet the expenses of
this work."
"Yes," said he, thrusting his hand into his pocket, and taking out
and opening his pocket-book, and handing me a bill, "there is twenty
dollars for T---- County"; and, handing me another bill, "There is ten
dollars for the world."
I was very much gratified with his appropriation of the money, as I saw
that, in my conversations with him, I had given him a clear idea of the
local or home work and the general or foreign work carried on by the
American Bible Society.
A bountiful supper followed, and the evening passed very pleasantly and
rapidly in conversation; with many reminiscences of our life at the
Springs, and the various persons we had met there. At length he ordered
the Bible brought forward, and the servants summoned for prayers. A
large number, including the house-servants, and their husbands and
children who lived in the kitchen and other adjacent buildings, were
soon assembled. The master and myself were the only white persons in
the group. He sat near me in a large chair, thin, pale, and sickly, his
two crutches lying across his legs, and seemed profoundly interested
and impressed. With a stillness that was almost motionless and
breathless, and with a fixed, an earnest, an excited attention, such
as I have never seen, only as I have seen it in many similar groups,
they all listened while I read to them a portion of the blessed Word
of God--that Word that I have found so potent to soothe and cheer and
bless the most ignorant and the most oppressed--and then we all bowed
together before our common Father, and in language as simple as I could
command I earnestly besought his blessing to rest upon them all, and
commended master and slaves to his compassionate care and love. As,
after the lapse of so many years, the long-closed chambers of memory
open at my bidding, and, recalling this scene, I for the first time
commit it to pages that can be read by others, it all stands revealed
before me, so vivid, so _present_, so unspeakably tender and precious
in its memories, that again and again I have been compelled to lay down
my pen and wipe the fast-falling tears that would flow as I have lived
over again the golden, glorious hour thus spent in communing with God
and comforting his enslaved and suffering poor. The same divine power
comes down upon me now, while I write, as when I knelt in the midst of
that dark group, melting my soul with a tenderness so inexpressibly
sweet, and irradiating my whole being with a joy so unearthly that I
can but exclaim with the poetess:
"Tell us if the gleams of glory,
Bursting on us when we pray,
Are not transient, blest revealings
Of our _home_, so far away;
Loving glances of our Father,
Sent to lure our souls away."
A delightful night's rest was followed by a most beautiful day. A
morning stroll revealed to me the character and extent of my host's
plantation. His residence was a large brick house, standing in the
midst of a grove of forest-trees, and presented a most neglected,
not to say dilapidated, appearance. A great many panes of glass
had been broken from the windows; the doors were out of order; it
had been unpainted for many years; the fences, out-buildings, and
everything about it had a "tumble-down" look, and all presented
about as "shiftless" an appearance as ever distressed the soul of
a neat and thrifty Miss Ophelia. If my memory is not at fault, the
plantation contained one thousand acres. It was as rich, productive,
and beautiful land as I have ever seen. It lay in the heart of one of
the finest tobacco-growing regions in the United States. The stock,
most of which was "blooded," and of the finest quality, presented noble
subjects for the pencil of a Rosa Bonheur, as they were feeding in
his large pastures, where the blue grass was up to my horse's knees.
The buildings I have already described sadly marred a landscape of
exceeding beauty. This was the paternal estate. He had lived with his
parents until their death, and, being the youngest son and an invalid,
they had given him the homestead, providing liberally for the other
members of the family, who lived in adjoining counties and were very
wealthy. The place was cultivated by his own slaves, who, including old
and young, I think must have numbered nearly or quite a hundred.
Shall I describe the household?
My host was unmarried. I do not know his age. I remember that his hair
was so much frosted that it was decidedly iron-gray; but I am sure that
it must have been prematurely so, on account of the great suffering
he had endured. His housekeeper was a large, fat, gross-looking
negro woman, one of his own slaves. But she was more than his
housekeeper--she was the mother of his children. Here was one of those
strange, unaccountable, revolting alliances--far more common than the
great world has ever dreamed--that set at defiance the laws of God not
only, but all other laws--where the one least attractive of all upon
the plantation becomes the master's unholy choice. It hardly required
the second look to detect among the groups of colored children that
were playing about the yard four who bore to their father the double
relation of children and slaves. The two eldest were girls, probably
six and eight years old, and they had his light gray eyes, his double
chin, and, indeed, all his features much more strongly marked than is
usual where both the parents are either white or black. In their color,
his white blood preponderated very largely over that of the mother;
their hair indicated their African parentage much more positively than
their skin. The two boys were much darker than their sisters, and the
features of their father were less strongly though indisputably marked.
The youngest was a handsome little fellow not more than three or four
years old.
Here, then, to any one who had seen but a tithe of what had fallen
under my observation in years of horseback-riding where I had been
in constant communication with masters and slaves, was the full
explanation of the intense interest and anxiety of my host in regard to
the _schools_ and _laws_ in the free States. Here was a mind agitated
with the most terrible conflicts, the most excruciating anxieties,
that ever raged in the human heart. Here were the pangs of a guilty
conscience in regard to the past; and all the instincts of a father
moved to their profoundest depths in behalf of his children, who were
legal slaves. He knew, even better than I did, the unutterably terrible
future that awaited them as slaves. He knew not only the possibilities
but the probabilities in regard to the fate of his daughters, which
the laws and the customs of society rendered doubly sure. It was to
a mind thus agitated and distressed that I had brought the sweet
message, "The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from _all_ sin." It was
to a spirit thus moved that I unfolded the fullness and the freeness
of the forgiveness and salvation purchased by the sufferings and death
of the "Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world." It was to
one thus involved and entangled in the meshes of sin that I spoke of
a Deliverer from its thralldom and power. O wondrous message! Often
as I have looked into the faces of the vilest of the vile, I have
been thrilled and startled at the sound of my own voice as I have
proclaimed to them: "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as
white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool."
No wonder that he listened intently, and that his eyes often filled
with tears, as I sat long at his bedside, where he was compelled to lie
the greater part of the time, endeavoring to instruct him and lead him
to Christ. If I were to repeat all the strange questions that he asked
and that I answered--questions the like of which I never heard of being
propounded to a minister of the gospel before--they would be far more
strange and startling to my readers than anything I have written. No
wonder that he esteemed and loved me as he did! Probably no clergyman
had ever treated him with that consideration or instructed him with
that care and earnestness that I had.
Possibly if I had known as much of his character as I afterward
learned, I should have been less enthusiastic and hopeful in my
efforts to instruct him and lead him to Christ. But it has been one
of the incidents of my long wanderings and extended intercourse
with strangers, that I have made the acquaintance of negro-traders,
slave-hunters, gamblers, and other like characters, enjoyed their
hospitality, prayed with and for them and their families, and given
kind and hopeful words of instruction, where those who knew these
people best had little heart or hope to put forth such efforts in their
behalf. At times I have been permitted and rejoiced to learn that such
labors have been attended with the happiest results.
When I asked the officers of the Bible Society the way to the residence
of my friend, and told them of my promise to make him a visit, the
strange, blank expression upon their faces told me plainly that his
home was not a resort for clergymen. Their silence on the subject was
far more expressive than the few ejaculations of surprise that were
uttered. No wonder that he took such strange ways of manifesting his
affection and regard. Once he called a servant and gave directions to
have two white shoats thoroughly washed in soapsuds, and driven up to
the front door for me to look at. He told me he had sent to Marshall P.
Wilder, near Boston, Massachusetts, for a pair of white pigs and a pair
of chickens, which with the freight had cost him a large sum, which
he named, but which I have forgotten. He was anxious to gratify me by
seeing them in the best possible condition. Indeed, he seemed never to
forget that I was his guest, and he was constantly striving to do all
in his power for my entertainment, and to render my stay with him as
pleasant and protracted as possible. Very often he would repeat what he
said to me so frequently at the Springs:
"If I could only have none but good people for associates, I believe I
could be a good man. But I haven't got a bit of stability. I am just
carried away by the crowd I am with. If I could only have you here, I
believe I could be a Christian. If you will only stay here and preach
for us, I will give the ground for a church and help build it, and I
will bind my estate for a part of your salary after I am dead and gone,
as long as you will stay. The trouble is now, if we do go to church,
any one else there might just as well get up and preach as the man
that does preach.[2] You are an educated man, and I believe you are a
good man; and then you are a gentleman. If they would only send such
preachers into this country, I tell you they would take the crowd.
My mother was a Baptist, and I believe she was a good woman, and if
I was fit to belong to any church, I should like to join the Baptist
Church on her account. But I don't care very much about that. You are
a Presbyterian, and if you will only come and start a Presbyterian
church, I will do everything for you that I say."
When the hour for dinner arrived, we two alone sat down to a table that
fully redeemed the promise of the night before. We had as nice a turkey
as ever tempted the appetite, and a superabundance of other dishes,
"the best that the plantation afforded."
As I could only make a brief stay with my friend, I was anxious to
leave something with him that would, if possible, deepen his religious
impressions, and give him the instruction that he so much needed, after
I had gone. Sitting at his bedside, I gave him Rev. Newman Hall's "Come
to Jesus"--a few copies of which I usually carried in my saddle-bags.
I expressed to him my very high appreciation of the little work, and,
in order so to enlist his interest in it that he would not fail to read
it after I had left him, I told him how very highly it was esteemed
by the late General John H. Cocke, of Virginia, whom I had known some
years before, while superintendent of the colporteur operations of the
American Tract Society in that State. My host was of an old Virginia
horse-racing, sporting family, and his pride in the old State insured
his attention to anything I would say in regard to so distinguished a
Virginian. So I proceeded:
"The General had a magnificent estate in Fluvanna County, Virginia--was
President of the American Temperance Union, was prominently identified
with many of our national benevolent institutions, and was withal
very fond of doing good in a genial, quiet way. On one of his visits
to Richmond, Miss Jennie Taylor, daughter of his old friend Rev. Dr.
Taylor, of the Union Theological Seminary in Prince Edward County,
had recently been married; and, while attending to his business, he
ran into the store of her husband to congratulate him. The bride was
a great favorite with him, as she was with a very large circle of the
best people in the State, who loved her for her own and her honored
father's sake. As the General was about to leave, he said:
"'I wish to make you and your bride a very valuable present,' and
handed him a tract of four pages.
"'Thank you,' said he, and immediately took from his desk a copy of
'Come to Jesus' and said, 'Please accept that in return, General, and
don't fail to read it.'
"But a few days after this the General was in the city, and called
again at the store, and said:
"'Where can I get copies of that little volume, "Come to Jesus"? I am
delighted with it, and must have a quantity for distribution.'
"'I order them by the hundred copies from the Tract Society in New
York,' was the response, 'and always keep a supply on hand to give away
as I have opportunity.'
"The General soon procured a supply, and he had so many proofs of their
great usefulness--so many of those to whom he gave them expressed their
gratitude, and testified to the great benefit they had received from
their perusal--that he ordered them again and again, and scattered
hundreds of them over the country."
"How can I get a lot of them?" said my host, quite fired with the
missionary spirit by this recital. I told him that I knew of no nearer
place than the depository of the American Tract Society at Cincinnati,
Ohio, which was several hundred miles distant. He would not rest until
I had written out for him the address of Seely Wood, the depositary,
and given him full instructions how to order them. On my next annual
visit to the county I found several copies of "Come to Jesus" in the
family of a Presbyterian elder, living near the county-seat, and,
inquiring of him how he obtained them, he said:
"I found a package of them addressed to me at the post-office, and the
postmaster said they had been left there by Mr. ----" (my host), "and
that he left several other packages there addressed to Rev. Mr. ----,
principal of the seminary, and the officers of the different churches."
The matter was an inexplicable mystery to him, and to all that received
those packages. They knew him well, and afterward described his
character to me as far different from that which usually pertains to a
tract-distributor. They told me that he was a very cruel master, and
that it was the general belief that he had shot and secretly paid the
owner his price for a negro because he thought him too intimate with
his housekeeper.
At night I preached in a small school-house, near his residence, to
about a dozen persons who had assembled in response to the ringing
of a small bell late in the afternoon and at the hour of assembling,
the signal in all that region for preaching by a stranger, as I have
elsewhere described.
Perhaps I should say that as a matter of form I asked my host, soon
after my arrival, if he had received the letters I had forwarded to
him, and sent his overseer's boys to school as he had proposed. He said
he had received the letters, but gave some excuse or reason for not
having sent them as yet. He ordered them dressed and called into the
parlor for my inspection, that I might judge of their capacity for an
education. This I afterward learned caused a great commotion in the
"negro quarters," as they all thought I must be a "nigger-trader," and
this examination was in reference to the price I would pay for them.
As my duties were very pressing, I spent but two nights with my host,
and left him the next morning, with many thanks for his hospitality,
and with earnest expressions of regret on his part--never to see him
again.
A few months later I read a notice of his death in the papers,
accompanied with this statement:
"He has left a very large estate. By his will he has freed a part of
his slaves, and given his plantation and nearly all his property,
including his slaves, to those he has freed."
On my next visit to the county-seat, I hitched my horse to a post, and
before entering any other house went directly to the county clerk's
office and asked him if he would do me the favor to allow me to
read Mr. ----'s will. He at once produced the volume in which it was
recorded, and I was about to read it, when he said:
"I have the original will here, if you would prefer to see that."
I thanked him, and he handed it to me. It was in his own handwriting.
The spelling was very bad; as, for instance, I remember that "be" was
spelt "bea," and a good many other words were as badly spelled. I have
often been similarly astonished to find that men who had a great deal
of general intelligence, and were most interesting talkers, were unable
to spell the simplest sentence correctly. But the clerk told me that he
recorded the will exactly as it was written, and that bad spelling did
not vitiate any legal document. The will was very brief, and I remember
its principal provisions as follows:
"I give and bequeath to ----" (the mother of his children) "her liberty
from the hour of my death."
"I give and bequeath to her children" (here followed the names of her
five children) "their liberty from the hour of my death."
"I give to ----" (another woman) "her liberty from the hour of my
death."
"I give to my brother ---- my fiddle."
"I give to my brother ---- my kitchen furniture."
These brothers, when visiting him, had in joke asked him to make these
legacies, saying that was all they wanted of his property, and he had
_in earnest_ told them he would give them what they asked. He also gave
a little niece, the daughter of a sister, a valuable gold watch and
chain, which he had promised her. He then gave a very small legacy--I
think only three hundred dollars--to the mother of his children. Of her
five children, only four were his. To these he gave all the remainder
of his property, including plantation, blooded stock, slaves, money,
etc., and directed that "they be sent to the State of New York," and
placed in the best schools and thoroughly educated.[3]
Some ten days subsequent to the date of his will he had added a
codicil. In this he gave the name and date of birth of each of the four
children, in the order of their birth, and added, "These are my own
children," and something like an appeal that they might be permitted to
receive what he had left for them, and a hope that they might enjoy all
that wealth and education could procure for them.
But the saddest, strangest thing about the will was its exceeding
cruelty to the rest of his slaves. He directed that they all be sold
for the benefit of his children that he had freed; and, that they might
bring the greatest possible price, he ordered that they all be sent
to New Orleans and sold upon the block at auction--not in families,
but each one alone. His will directed his executor to advertise the
"sale" for three months in the principal cities of the Southwest
and South, so as to secure as large an attendance as possible of
negro-traders and planters wishing to buy slaves. This horrified even
his pro-slavery neighbors; for, had they been sold at home, many of
them would have been bought by those who owned husbands and wives that
were intermarried, or had "taken up" with them, and others would have
been bought in the region, so that fewer families would have been
separated. His own relatives, who would otherwise have inherited this
large estate, were very wealthy, and he knew that they would spare no
money in contesting his will. Hence he took precautions such as I have
never heard of before to prevent its being broken. After he had got it
written to suit himself--and I was told that he said he was inspired to
write it--he made a large dinner-party, and among others invited the
prominent physicians of the neighborhood. After the usual pleasures
and excitements of such a party, as his guests were about leaving, he
called the physicians to his room, and said:
"Gentlemen, you all know me well, and I wish to know if, from all that
you have seen to-day, you think that I am competent to make my will?"
They all answered him in the affirmative. He then said, "I wish to know
if this is your professional opinion, and that if called upon you will
make oath to it?"
They again gave an affirmative response. He then took his will from his
pocket, and said:
"Gentlemen, here is my will, written by myself, exactly as I want
to dispose of my property, and I wish to sign it in your presence,
and have you sign it as witnesses," which was done. Notwithstanding
these precautions, I heard of the will as before the court, of the
disagreement of the jury, and of the inability of the contestants to
either establish or break it. I suppose the emancipation proclamation
freed all the slaves before the case was settled by the courts.
Fortunately for his children, I was told that he became so alarmed
about them before he died, that he sent them to Ohio, and deposited
money there for their support. Otherwise they would have remained
slaves during the controversy in regard to the will. I have inquired
after these children at Oberlin, at Xenia, and in many of the towns and
cities of Ohio, but I have never been able to hear of them. I do not
know whether or not they ever received the rest of the large estate
which properly belonged to them.
I have written out these facts in all this detail, thinking that they
would answer in part the query whether "anything strange or interesting
did ever happen to a missionary," and also to reveal a type of
character and civilization with which I have very often been brought
in contact. I knew a free colored woman, and she was at the time a
very liberal contributor to the American Bible Society, who told me
that her own daughter had been educated at a fashionable school by her
white father, and was the wife of an officer in the United States Army.
She visited her daughter frequently near one of the largest Northern
cities, not as her mother, but as her old nurse or "mammy." Her husband
supposed that her own brunette mother had died in her infancy, and that
she had been "raised" by this "mammy," as such nurses were called, and
hence their great affection for each other.
Within a few miles of the home of my host, in an adjoining county, I
knew two colored girls whose mother was "as black as the hinges of
midnight," whose white father and master had left them and a legacy
for them in the care of a sister, to whom he had willed a large number
of slaves; and those two girls were trained to call their mother
"Margaret," and always to treat her as their "mammy." This was in
anticipation of their going North to a fashionable boarding-school, and
that their mother might gratify her maternal instincts by accompanying
them or visiting them without detriment to their social standing or
prospects. It was well known in the Southwest and South for many years
before the war that, notwithstanding the intense prejudice on account
of color so universal in the North, many of the most expensive and
fashionable boarding-schools received pupils from Cuba, South America,
and other tropical countries, even if their skins were decidedly
dark. As colored children were so rigidly excluded from nearly all
the best schools in the country, many availed themselves of the
exception thus made in behalf of those of foreign birth by placing
pupils in these schools whose tropical lineage was only "asserted" by
those who paid their bills. A few Northern schools, as is well known,
have always received colored pupils. Bishop Payne, of the African
Methodist Episcopal Church, President of Wilberforce University,
Xenia, Ohio, told me during the war that before the war most of his
students were those who had been born slaves and were educated by
their white fathers. The stories that they have communicated to him
of the sufferings they have endured as they have thought of the life
to which their children were exposed if left in slavery--and as they
have traveled with them up the river, and been compelled to witness the
indignities to which they were exposed, as they were obliged to leave
them on deck with the rough crowds of passengers, liable at all times
to the basest insults, while they, as they valued their lives, dared
not offer them a father's protection--would alone make a volume of
painfully thrilling interest. Alas, that there were many thousands of
such parents whose natures were so blunted that they cared as little
for their offspring as the dumb beasts around them!
But I have said all and more than I had intended, though very far from
all that I could say upon this subject, and will betake myself to more
pleasant and congenial narrations of my labors in the Brush.
SUPPLEMENTARY FACTS.
In writing the foregoing chapter, I, of deliberate purpose, suppressed
the name and place of residence of the person whose remarkable history
I have given in so much detail. I wished to make the case less personal
than representative of a state of society now happily passed away. I
gave the facts as far as I had received them.
But, since reaching New York, and while reading the proof-sheets
of this volume, I have received additional facts from the highest
authority; and, as the case has become so celebrated, there is now no
reason why I should withhold any of them.
In the year 1859, one year after my election to the presidency of
Cumberland College, I one day made a very long horseback-ride in order
to reach the residence and spend the night with the Hon. Francis M.
Bristow, at Elkton, Todd County, Kentucky. Mr. Bristow was at the
time serving his second term as a member of Congress from the third
district. I was anxious to see him, from the fact that, in accordance
with instructions from the maker of the above-named will, the executor
had employed him and his son, a young lawyer who had recently opened
an office in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, to defend the will in a suit that
had already been instituted in the Circuit Court. I did not find the
distinguished Congressman at home, but was so fortunate as to meet and
spend the night with his son.
I have called several times, since reaching the city, upon the "junior
counsel for the will," now the Hon. Benjamin H. Bristow, late Secretary
of the United States Treasury, Washington, D.C.
The maker of the will was Mr. Lycurgus B. Leavell, of Trenton, Todd
County, Kentucky. General Bristow informs me that the case was tried
before Hon. Thomas E. Dabney, at a term of the Circuit Court, held at
Elkton, Kentucky. The senior counsel for the will was Hon. Francis M.
Bristow; the junior counsel, Benjamin H. Bristow and H.G. Petrie. The
senior counsel for the contestants was the Hon. Gustavus Henry, the
"eagle orator" of Tennessee; the junior counsel was James E. Bailey,
late United States Senator for Tennessee. As the case was so very
important, the jury was selected from the most prominent and honorable
slaveholders in the county. Young Bristow and Bailey opened the case.
It was ably contested, and of most extraordinary interest, but this is
not the place to describe it. The jury were eleven for and one against
sustaining the will.
The war soon came on; the slaves, including several who had recently
been imported from Africa in the Wanderer, were freed by the
emancipation proclamation; the contest was withdrawn, and the will
established. The executor and his bondsmen were financially ruined
by the war, and only a small part of the estate, some forty thousand
dollars, reached the two surviving children to whom it was devised. One
of them, a young lady, has recently graduated with distinguished honor,
and the president and professors of the college speak of her in terms
of the very highest praise.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 2: This was, alas! too true--and true of a very large portion
of country that I have visited, where the great majority of the
preachers were uneducated.]
[Footnote 3: At the time of his death this property would have sold for
nearly or quite a quarter of a million dollars. The plantation alone
was sold under the hammer for ninety-five thousand dollars.]