There was a good deal of excitement in town the next morning. Two white
men stood by the post office talking.
"Did yer hear the news?"
"No, what wuz it?"
"Ben Davis tried ter break jail las' night."
"You don't say so! What a fool! He ain't be'n sentenced yit."
"Well, now," said the other, "I 've knowed Ben a long time, an' he wuz a
right good nigger. I kinder found it hard ter b'lieve he did steal that
whip. But what 's a man's feelin's ag'in' the proof?"
They spoke on awhile, using the past tense as if they were speaking of a
dead man.
"Ef I know Jedge Hart, Ben 'll wish he had slep' las' night, 'stidder
tryin' ter break out'n jail."
At ten o'clock the prisoner was brought into court. He walked with
shambling gait, bent at the shoulders, hopelessly, with downcast eyes,
and took his seat with several other prisoners who had been brought in
for sentence. His wife, accompanied by the children, waited behind him,
and a number of his friends were gathered in the court room.
The first prisoner sentenced was a young white man, convicted several
days before of manslaughter. The deed was done in the heat of passion,
under circumstances of great provocation, during a quarrel about a
woman. The prisoner was admonished of the sanctity of human life, and
sentenced to one year in the penitentiary.
The next case was that of a young clerk, eighteen or nineteen years of
age, who had committed a forgery in order to procure the means to buy
lottery tickets. He was well connected, and the case would not have been
prosecuted if the judge had not refused to allow it to be nolled, and,
once brought to trial, a conviction could not have been avoided.
"You are a young man," said the judge gravely, yet not unkindly, "and
your life is yet before you. I regret that you should have been led into
evil courses by the lust for speculation, so dangerous in its
tendencies, so fruitful of crime and misery. I am led to believe that
you are sincerely penitent, and that, after such punishment as the law
cannot remit without bringing itself into contempt, you will see the
error of your ways and follow the strict path of rectitude. Your fault
has entailed distress not only upon yourself, but upon your relatives,
people of good name and good family, who suffer as keenly from your
disgrace as you yourself. Partly out of consideration for their
feelings, and partly because I feel that, under the circumstances, the
law will be satisfied by the penalty I shall inflict, I sentence you to
imprisonment in the county jail for six months, and a fine of one
hundred dollars and the costs of this action."
"The jedge talks well, don't he?" whispered one spectator to another.
"Yes, and kinder likes ter hear hisse'f talk," answered the other.
"Ben Davis, stand up," ordered the judge.
He might have said "Ben Davis, wake up," for the jailer had to touch the
prisoner on the shoulder to rouse him from his stupor. He stood up, and
something of the hunted look came again into his eyes, which shifted
under the stern glance of the judge.
"Ben Davis, you have been convicted of larceny, after a fair trial
before twelve good men of this county. Under the testimony, there can be
no doubt of your guilt. The case is an aggravated one. You are not an
ignorant, shiftless fellow, but a man of more than ordinary intelligence
among your people, and one who ought to know better. You have not even
the poor excuse of having stolen to satisfy hunger or a physical
appetite. Your conduct is wholly without excuse, and I can only regard
your crime as the result of a tendency to offenses of this nature, a
tendency which is only too common among your people; a tendency which is
a menace to civilization, a menace to society itself, for society rests
upon the sacred right of property. Your opinions, too, have been given a
wrong turn; you have been heard to utter sentiments which, if
disseminated among an ignorant people, would breed discontent, and give
rise to strained relations between them and their best friends, their
old masters, who understand their real nature and their real needs, and
to whose justice and enlightened guidance they can safely trust. Have
you anything to say why sentence should not be passed upon you?"
"Nothin', suh, cep'n dat I did n' take de whip."
"The law, largely, I think, in view of the peculiar circumstances of
your unfortunate race, has vested a large discretion in courts as to
the extent of the punishment for offenses of this kind. Taking your case
as a whole, I am convinced that it is one which, for the sake of the
example, deserves a severe punishment. Nevertheless, I do not feel
disposed to give you the full extent of the law, which would be twenty
years in the penitentiary,[1] but, considering the fact that you have a
family, and have heretofore borne a good reputation in the community, I
will impose upon you the light sentence of imprisonment for five years
in the penitentiary at hard labor. And I hope that this will be a
warning to you and others who may be similarly disposed, and that after
your sentence has expired you may lead the life of a law-abiding
citizen."
[Footnote 1: There are no degrees of larceny in North Carolina, and the
penalty for any offense lies in the discretion of the judge, to the
limit of twenty years.]
"O Ben! O my husband! O God!" moaned the poor wife, and tried to press
forward to her husband's side.
"Keep back, Nancy, keep back," said the jailer. "You can see him in
jail."
Several people were looking at Ben's face. There was one flash of
despair, and then nothing but a stony blank, behind which he masked his
real feelings, whatever they were.
Human character is a compound of tendencies inherited and habits
acquired. In the anxiety, the fear of disgrace, spoke the nineteenth
century civilization with which Ben Davis had been more or less closely
in touch during twenty years of slavery and fifteen years of freedom. In
the stolidity with which he received this sentence for a crime which he
had not committed, spoke who knows what trait of inherited savagery? For
stoicism is a savage virtue.