INCIDENTS AND PARTICULARS.
Sabbath holy
For the lowly
Paint with flowers thy glittering sod;
For affliction’s sons and daughters,
Bid thy mountains, woods and waters
Pray to God—our Father God.
Still God liveth,
Still he giveth
What no man can take away;
And, oh Sabbath! bringing gladness
Unto hearts of weary sadness,
Still thou art an holy day.”
_Whittier._
UNDER cover of the morning fog Captain Doc descended from the verandah
of the Postmaster’s residence. As he slid down a pillar of the open
piazza of the lower story, a black face stared from one of the lower
windows, with an expression of mingled terror and surprise. Reassured
by a smile upon Doc’s face, he raised the sash cautiously, and
whispered, “Does you want to come in?”
“No, no, Dick!” was the reply, “this town isn’t a safe enough place to
hold me when the day comes. The hounds will be back again, when they
have fed and slept a little. Have you been there all night?”
“Yes; and all alone too. The family knowed it wa’n’t safe for ’em
here, pertic’lar Mr. Rouse. And so dey left me to see after tings.
Gen. Baker, nor none of ’em’ dar’n’t _touch dis house_, cause the Post
Office is yere, and dat’s dee United States—they are ’afeared o’ de
Yankees you see. But, oh my! Ha’n’t it been a long night, and a _awful
one_! ’Pears like I’m a hundred yeah old. How many’s been killed?”
“I don’t know. Enough, anyhow.”
“Dey didn’t git yo’? I’m surprised, Doc.”
“No, nor they won’t;” and waving an adieu to Dick, the Captain walked
noiselessly to the back part of the garden, and leaped the fence into
Mercer street.
There, stiff and stark lay the body of John Carr, the Town Marshal; and
further up, close beside the fence, a shapeless heap, as it appeared,
which Doc knew must be the body of Moses Parker, whom the slave-catcher
had “got” on the previous evening.
Keeping on towards the hills and near the railroad, he escaped
unobserved; till, when ascending the hill, he heard his name spoken,
quite near him. Though startled for an instant, he was immediately
joined by Ned O’Bran, who came out from a clump of bushes where he had
spent the night in terror; and, in company, the two men walked to the
county seat, distant nearly twenty miles. There they found an excited
people, and several refugees from the scene of massacre, among whom was
Elder Jackson.
“Phebe,” said Uncle Jesse, early that morning, “I don’t believe you’d
best go up to church to-day. I don’t believe there’ll be many women
there, for I reckon they all would leave the town last night.”
“And _I_ don’t believe dar’ll be _no men_, nor no church nuther; fo’
Eldah Jackson bein a Legislatur man, an’ a Radical, ’ll have to streak
it, yo’ may be sho; fo’ of co’se de white folks has beat de niggahs, as
dey allus does.”
“Well, now, it’s queer; but I never did thought about the Elder last
night? For certain they’ll be after him; for there’s a political side
to this ’ere fuss. Now you git breakfast just as quick as you can, and
I’ll go over and see.”
“I’m afeared to have yo’ go.”
“But somebody ought to see after Elder Jackson.”
“Dat’s so; I wish I could go wid yo’.”
“No, no. Maybe I shall have to escape myself, and it’s a heap easier to
escape on horseback, than it would be in a wagon, and two of us.”
“Hadn’t yo’ best git Den Barden to go ’long, Jesse?” asked his wife as
he arose from his hasty breakfast.
“No, Phebe, I’m just agoing to leave the Laud Jesus Christ here, to
take care of you and the children, and get God Almighty to go ’long
with me, and see after me; and I’m going to go without anybody else at
all.”
So after reading with much needful moderation, and not without verbal
errors, the 69th Psalm, he knelt with his little family upon the
cottage floor, and repeated the same sentiments from a full heart.
Though not more than three miles from the village in a direct line, a
good five miles or more of circuitous and somewhat lonely road lay
between Jesse’s home and the scene of the massacre; and he had ample
time for reflection.
He had long maintained, among his neighbors, the only attitude an
unprejudiced lover of justice could; but it had brought to him alike,
confidence and distrust, reverence and envy, respect and aversion;
and while his assistance and advice were sought by the moderate and
by the extremists on both hands, he scarcely knew whether he had a
friend on whom he could certainly rely, or an enemy who would betray
him. Fortunately his road did not cross the river, for the city police
yet stationed at the bridge still denied passage to persons of color,
though allowing whites to pass freely.
As he entered the little town, he saw a number of men moving along the
principal street, and evidently carrying some heavy burden. He did not
approach them, but went directly to Elder Jackson’s house.
He found it deserted, and large charred spots upon the surface gave
evidence that attempts had been made to fire it; and the garden was
trodden down and utterly destroyed. He then turned toward Springer’s
house. This stood back from the sidewalk, and not without misgivings he
entered the trampled yard, and rapped at the closed door.
Springer answered the summons in person, and greeted his friend with
genuine cordiality.
“Why, brother Jesse, I’m surprised and glad both, to see you this
morning.”
“And I’m thanking the Laud, this minute to find you alive, and to get
inside the shelter of your house. It ’pears like the streets is full of
ghosts, or something a man’s glad to get away from. What is going on
down street? I seen ’em carrying something into society hall.”
“Come in and set down Brother, Jesse. I suppose they’re collecting the
dead. The Intendant was in here, and wanted me to go down and see them
before they moved ’em—to go on the coroner’s jury, in fact; but I told
him I couldn’t. I’m sick. This last night’s job is worse than a fever.
You didn’t come up, Jesse?”
“No, I didn’t. I couldn’t think it would be right, nor any good,
somehow, and so I staid away. But maybe now I ought to ha’ come?”
“No, you hadn’t; you’d only been another one. My mother-in-law is very
bad this morning. The scare last night was enough to kill a well woman,
and you know she was pretty sick and weak before. I guess we’d best
go away to talk. Come right up stairs, and we’ll set and talk all we
want to, and she won’t hear us;” and Mr. Springer took his guest to a
tasteful chamber.
The house was not large, but was well furnished and neatly kept.
“Where is the Elder?” asked Mr. Roome, when they were again seated.
“That I don’t know. He may be in the Kingdom of Glory, but I suppose
he left town, and went to the city maybe. He and Ned O’Bran went off
together, and the last I saw of him they were going up Main street,
making for Ned’s house.”
“How many is killed, and who be they?”
“Seven killed and two wounded that we know; and there’s a good many
more missing that we don’t know whether they’re dead or not. Marmor is
one o’ them.”
“Marmor? Well, if there was one man in town to be killed, Marmor would
be that man. There ain’t no man in Baconsville them white democrats
want to kill so bad as they do Marmor, without it is Watta!”
“Watta they’ve got! He’s gone! and I’m afeared they’ve got Marmor also.”
“_Watta’s gone?_ I _knowed_ he’d be killed!”
“Yes, and Den Pipsie, and Ham Sterns, and John Carr——”
“Why, Springer! You don’t say John Carr is killed?”
“He was the first man they took; then Moses Parker——I heard them both
shot, and knew the voices. Alfred Minton, he got shot too, but they say
he an’t dead yet. Oh, that makes me remember (rising). His father came
here just before you did, and wanted me to go down there. They wanted
somebody to pray; for he can’t live. I suppose I must go, but I tell
you I can’t bear to. All these things seem so awful that they make me
sick, and I can’t help it. Won’t you go Jesse? Go down and pray with
the poor fellow.”
“Where is he?”
“Lying right there on the ground where they shot him, last night; and
they say somebody has mommucked him up awfully.”
“Well, Brother Springer, I’ll go, but I want you to go ’long.”
“Do they know who shot him?” asked Uncle Jesse, when they were on their
way.
“It is said to be unknown parties that done all the shooting from this
“dead ring” they had, but there’s one comfort—the Lord knows who done
it; and He knows who started the thing, and put these unarmed victims
into the hands of an armed posse big enough to arrest the whole of
Aiken County. There,” (as they reached a point between Dan Lemfields’
corner, and the railroad trestle-work), “this is where Moses Parker
fell, and laid till an hour ago. You can see the blood.”
Mr. Roome looked, but did not speak. Passing under the trestle-work,
and advancing a few steps, they came upon a pool of blood.
“This is where our Town Marshal was shot between nine and ten o’clock
last night. I heard him holler, “Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord!” twice, before
they fired. It was a great volley, several guns, and I wonder they
didn’t some of ’em kill him instantly. He begged mighty hard before
they shot. I heard him.”
The men resumed their walk, turning down Cook street, and so coming out
upon Market street, and then turning down that.
“There, right there was the “dead ring,” they say, where they had
twenty-five or thirty prisoners, the Lord knows how long; and finally
shot some of ’em, and then swore the rest not to testify against them,
and let ’em go, and shot after ’em as they went.”
“Brother Springer,” said Uncle Jesse, grasping his companion’s arm,
“don’t tell me no such talk! You don’t expect I’m going to believe it’s
more than an awful bad dream you’ve had.”
“Did you dream you saw the blood back there? and there’s four or five
dead men in this hall at your left.”
“That’s a fact! Nor I didn’t dream the threats I’ve heard made; but I
really thought it was mostly blow and bluster; half of it any how!”
“So did I, so did I,” replied Springer, “and I wouldn’t believe, though
I seen all these streets thick with armed men in the evening, that they
meant to kill anybody,—only to scare the colored people,—till I heard
’em shoot John Carr, and then I was scared.”
By this time the two men had passed another street and an embankment
of the lower rail road, and approached a small group of citizens, both
colored and white. Upon the bare ground, in a great pool of blood, lay
the poor boy Minton, apparently in the last agonies of death. He was in
great distress, and unable to converse at all.
Fire-arms alone had not sufficed for the fiendishness of his murderers;
for blows as with an axe or hatchet, had gashed his side, broken his
ribs, and cut a large piece of flesh from his thigh. It was a horrible,
sickening sight.
“Alfred! Alfred!” cried Uncle Jesse, falling upon his knees at the
boy’s head.
“Alfred, who cut you so? Tell us who did it, Alfred; it makes fury boil
all over me!”
A groan was the only response; and then from the depths of his great
heart, so uniformly held in subjection to his clear reason, and
well balanced judgment, Uncle Jesse poured forth such a prayer as
had never been heard by those spectators before,—a prayer for the
departing soul; that it, going from this body weltering in blood shed
by murderous hands, might go up to the righteous Judge innocent of any
vengeful or unforgiving spirit;—a prayer full of righteous indignation
at these atrocious crimes against his people, and of the spirit which
said ‘Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.’
As he arose from his knees, Sam Pincksney touched his elbow, and they
shook hands in silence. Minton groaned and seemed to desire a change
of position. The father and brothers turned him upon his back. Another
groan, a quick gasp, a sigh, and death released him from suffering.
Many hands waited to give all needed, assistance and so Springer
invited a few of his neighbors to accompany him to his house, that Mr.
Roome might learn more particulars of the affair of the previous night.
“Now I want to get a clear idea of this matter as I can get,” said
Uncle Jesse when they were all seated in Springer’s chamber.
“I can tell you how it begun,” said the host, “but it will take us all,
and more too, to tell how it went on.”
He then narrated the history of the trouble from the collision on the
4th of the month, up to the time when General Baker rode to the city
across the river, substantially as the reader already has it.
“All this time while he was gone,” said Springer,—“about half an
hour,—armed bodies of men continued to come into town; and in fact,
a portion of them stopped and threw themselves into line right in
front of the house here. As soon as General Baker got back, they
mounted again, and went up on Mercer and Cook streets, and so on over
to the river there, and there they fell into line. Then myself and
Judge Rives, and Pincksney, and Elder Jackson, had an interview there
with General Baker; and we asked him if there was anything we could
do,—what was necessary to bring about peace.
“He said nothing would satisfy him but the surrender of the men and
their arms. The white men were so boisterous they treated us very
badly. One man, Captain Sweargen, drew his pistol while we were having
this interview with General Baker;—and really, I thought he seemed to
be looking at me, and that he was going to shoot; but when he saw me
looking at him, he put his pistol in his pocket again.
“Pincksney was whipped in his face, cut right in, as you see, and so
then we got away as quick as possible.” “Didn’t the General stop these
things?”
“No, not at all. Didn’t appear to notice ’em at all. Then the firing
begun pretty soon down on the river-bank.”
“The white men down there are saying this morning that it was the
Militia that begun the firing,” said Sam Pincksney.
“No? Why, they can’t say that! It sounded like right from, the
river-bank,” said Tim Grassy, an intelligent-looking mullato, about
thirty years of age, who was a brother-in-law of Springer.
“Well, _I_ know the _white men_ fired first, for just let me tell you,”
said Ben, a younger brother of Tim Grassy.
“George Hansen was at our warehouse, (Ben was bookkeeper in Springer’s
cotton warehouse,) and he told me there was going to be trouble, and
he wanted me to go up to his plantation with him, and see his game
chickens. But I told him I couldn’t get off. He told me he saw a great
crowd of white men gathered up back there in the country. An hour after
he left, squads of men commenced coming in, and half an hour after that
I went into the armory for protection. The white men opened fire and
kept it up as much as fifteen minutes, and maybe half an hour, before
they gave the colored men a _chance_ to fire at all. I know, for I saw
it.”
“Did any white men get killed?”
“One, Merry Walter.”
“Then I suppose some of our people must have killed him!” said Uncle
Jesse, sadly.
“Well, I don’t know,” said Mann Harris, who had sat quietly listening,
though reputed the greatest talker in Baconsville, “they quarrelled
among theirselves, some.”
“Yes,” replied Ben, “but Merry was a Democrat, and I suppose they
wouldn’t want to kill him themselves.”
“I heard some of ’em talking this morning, some respectable-looking
gentlemen from Georgia, and saying that they had been told that this
had been all to break up a nest of thieves and robbers—that the people
in Baconsville was that, and that Capt. Doc is a rowdy, and the Militia
Company is a band o’ thieves; and Hanson Baker said that is a fact and
just so.”
“I never heard anything like that in all the years I’ve lived here,”
said Springer, the oldest resident except Uncle Jesse, who assented to
his testimony.
“They talked about Pompey Conner’s robbing market wagons, and even
hauled up that old graveyard affair, more than three years old; and
they know the Republican niggers are after every thief they know of,
and punishes ’em too. Pompey took his turn in jail, and so did that old
republican nigger that dug them three graves open; the democratic one
got away, but I’ve seen him back just the other day. I don’t believe
they cared anything for the graves; they only thought there was some
money buried somewhere in the graveyard during the war.”
“That mean democratic nigger that lives over back of the hill there,
was in town yesterday, and some of ’em said that he told the white
folks where to find men—where their houses were, and if that is true
it is just contemptible!” said Springer.
“The fact is,” said Ben, the niggers are getting a bad name everywhere,
with these old white aristocrats, and especially since this fuss.”
Ben was young, and his honest, expressive face glowed as he spoke, with
animation which subsided immediately into grave thoughtfulness.
“What has become of Capt. Doc?”
“Don’t know; nobody knows. He’s sharp though, and I hope he has got
away. If they were to get him they would think he must be drawn and
quartered, I expect,” said Ben.
“Springer, you said Marmor is among the missing?” said Uncle Jesse.
“We don’t know what has become of him. Old man Baker was in Dan’s house
a good part of the night, Pincksney says; and the houses join, you
know; and the last seen of Marmor, he was jumping the fence into Dan’s
back yard. Dan’s folks are there this morning, but don’t seem to want
to see nor speak to anybody. There’s a mystery about it somehow.”
“Dan is a kind of a queer dark man, you know. Jews mostly is,” said Tim
Grassy.
“Dan is a likely sort of fellow,” said Mr. Roome, “I wish he didn’t
sell so much whiskey.”
“Between twelve and one o’clock,” resumed the host, “I heard Col. Baker
(at least I took it to be his voice). Some of them just opposite here
had said the house was afire, and I heard him sing out to the crowd,
‘Put that fire out! nothing like that shall go on; I don’t want any
burning.’ Soon after that I heard firing again, and I heard somebody
else holler. I don’t know who it was, but I suppose it was Moses
Parker.”
“Who shot him?”
“That I don’t know.”
“Where was Watta killed? Poor fellow! I knowed he’d be killed, if
anybody was.”
“Down at the ‘dead-ring,’” said Harris, who then gave the account the
reader has had, and continued, “When I stepped into my house I stepped
right onto some of my wife’s clothes. They had taken ’em all out of
the bureau, and flung ’em all over the floor, broke open three large
trunks I had, and taken away every rag of clothing I had, and my wife’s
bran new dress that she had made very fancy to be baptized in next
month—had never had it on—they taken that away, and her watch and
chain, and all her jewelry, and all my clothes; and taken a pin of mine
that didn’t cost me but sixty-five dollars; and I don’t suppose some
of them fellers ever had sixty-five dollars in their lives; and I told
Pick. Baker so this morning. Just so; and he said it was some of the
factory crowd from the city, none o’ his men hadn’t done it. I said I
don’t know; I seen some of his men looked pretty bad too, and I thought
they’d take things just as quick as anybody.
“He says, ‘Well, there’s bad men in all crowds.’ Everything in my
house is broken up. They carried off all my lamps and such things, tore
down my curtains, broke my dishes, and carried off what they couldn’t
break—all the victuals and everything. When I told Gaston so this
morning, he offered me twenty-five cents to get me something to eat,
and I told him I thanked him. They just walked right over my wife’s
clothes, and spit on ’em.”
“Harris, what do you suppose they did all this for?”
“Well, they said before it happened that I would see the white people
intended to carry the state democratic, and I expect this is to
intimidate us. Hanson Baker told me last night, (or this morning it
was) when I was going home after they done killed the men that was
lying there; and I asked them how they intended to carry the State
Democratic, and they said, ‘You see there? Well, that’s the way we’ll
lay you just so, if ever you vote the Republican ticket again;’ and I
said, ‘If that’s the way you’re going on, I an’t a going to vote nohow.
I’m done voting,’ and they said, ‘You’d better be done voting, unless
you vote the Democratic ticket.”
The whole company accepted this view of the motives of the rioters.
“They didn’t disturb you, Springer?” asked Uncle Jesse. “You didn’t
finish.”
“Well,” he resumed, “this shooting and hollering and setting fires and
so on, continued till the hours I named; and when they got through
killing those they wanted to, or could get, the crowd commenced going
away. You could hear them passing out in different directions,
hollering and cursing and cavorting around, and saying what they had
done. They would swear and say that they had got Baconsville all right
now; thought they had killed a sufficient number to prevent nigger-rule
any longer in the county—thought they had put a quietus on nigger-rule
in the county for all time to come. They went on hollering and calling
the names of the men they had killed; and one would say, ‘He don’t
answer,’ and another would say, ‘He’s looking at the moon and don’t
wink his eyes,’ and they went on making sport of the men they had
killed, and cursing all the time.
Then they commenced robbing, and you could hear it all over town.
It looked like they had parted themselves up into squads for that
business. You could hear them go to a man’s store, and burst it open
and go in, all along the streets. They broke open my warehouse,
and destroyed all my books and papers, and tore up the floors and
partitions—well, just ransacked the place entirely. Then they came
here. I had become alarmed at that time, and said to these young men
who were here with me, ‘I think it is best for us not to remain in this
building, I think they will come here.’ Up to that time I was basing an
opinion that they would not come here, upon the part that I had taken
in the whole affair during the day. I felt that it would keep me out of
danger; but then I saw very readily that even General Baker had lost
all control over the men, and I became alarmed, and thought best to
leave the house.
I thought probably they would not interfere with my wife; but if _we_
were found here, they would kill us. Sure enough, I suppose we hadn’t
any more than got out of the house and passed round from the front to
the back side, before we heard the footsteps of them passing up the
front steps. I was then behind the house, and there was a light in
my wife’s bedroom, and I saw one of the men in that room. I didn’t
recognize him, though I heard him very distinctly ask her where I was,
and where Benny was. She told him that she didn’t know where I was;
that I had gone away somewhere. They then commenced ransacking the
house; and they took a couple of shot guns I had here, and carried them
off; and they did use some very abusive words to my wife. That’s the
extent of what occurred here.”
“No, that’s not quite all, Sam,” said Tim Grassy. “They asked my
sister, who is staying with my mother who is sick, you know, they
asked her where was Springer’s money? She told them they didn’t have
any. They told her she was a cursed liar. I heard that distinctly, for
I felt uneasy about my sick mother, and crept back close up to the
window. They staid there some time, and we heard them coming down, and
I jumped over in Mrs. Dunn’s yard opposite her cow house, and stayed
there till I knowed all of them was gone.”
“Well, suppose we all go down to the hall and see the bodies of the
dead, and then I must go home,” said Uncle Jesse.
The six men walked slowly down to the old warehouse, which had been
reconstructed into a hall for the use of the various secret societies
of the village, of which the people of the South are so fond.
There arranged in a row, were the bodies of five men; all murdered for
possessing greater or less proportions of African blood, and being
true to the National Government which gave them freedom—nothing more
nothing less.
But for these it had been no crime to pass ordinances protective of the
public peace and convenience, or to enforce them—no crime to be an
intelligent leader among one’s fellows—no crime to practice in the use
of arms under sanction of law and the nation’s flag.
The homes of these men had been completely sacked, and not a whole
chair or table was left in some, on which to lay a coffin, though the
wife in one had given her only bed, a poor stack of straw, to ease the
removal of wounded Merry Walter to his home across the river.
The body of the highly respected and beloved Watta was in his home,
where a distracted widow knelt beside it comfortless; and two
fatherless little ones clung to her skirts, and wept in sympathy,
though ignorant of the magnitude of their loss.
A large number of spectators thronged the hall and vicinity, among whom
were many white people from the adjoining State of Georgia. Blacks were
still denied passage by the A— police.
“How many were wounded?” asked one.
“Three colored and one white!”
“Talk about Georgia! Talk about Georgia?” said he.
“It’s all this Captain Doc and his lawless band,” said another
Georgian. “This Baconsville is an awful place,” he continued,
regardless of the presence, shrieks and wailings of the families of the
slain, except as he must needs pause occasionally for the sounds to
subside, that he might be heard. “They are all a set of thieves. It’s a
very Sodom!”
“There’s no more of that kind of doings here than in any other place in
the South,” said a third, “the fact is there a’n’t more than forty-five
or fifty white persons live in this village, and the Bakers and Gaston
and them, think they shouldn’t be responsible to any laws passed by
_colored men_, and think it is an outrage if they or other white folks
are arrested for violating them; and the niggers have mostly let them
do as they pleased, which has made the exceptions seem personal and
harder to stand.
“On the other hand, it’s likely the niggers don’t waste any love on
old Bob, as they naturally can’t forget how he got his property; and
it is likely there’s all the envious feelings the poor are apt to have
against the rich, besides, which makes their overbearing ways and
impositions, and violations of town ordinances seem more offensive;
and it’s possible they take offence sometimes when none is intended;
maybe it is so on both sides, though the niggers are not _naturally_
suspicious, we know. It’s just an envious, suspicious village, with
overbearing and suspicious white neighbors.”
“There’s a little more than that too,” said another man. “Here’s a
State with a big nigger majority on election days, and a county with a
bigger one; and a State and national campaign a coming, and it’s the
centennial, and the nigger ‘gush’ is tantalizing to them that don’t
want a union with the North, unless they can control it; and the whites
naturally want to begin the next hundred years with the State in their
hands.”
“Oh, fol-de-rol-dol! The superior race _ought_ to rule. That’s the
whole of it,” said another.
“All that doesn’t make this right,” said the first speaker. “The whites
have had the best chance to be civilized, and the negroes have _never
done anything_ like this. Talk about Georgia! Georgia has never been
guilty of such a barbarous thing as this, and had it not been for those
Bean Island men, it never would have happened.”
“_That stirs fury all over one, sir_; to have that said after I have
strove so hard to keep things quiet in Bean Island!” said Uncle Jesse,
“I shall inquire about that;” and scarcely bidding a hasty adieu to his
friends, he abruptly left the place, and mounting his horse, rode home,
and hastened to the residence of Deacon Atwood.
“Deacon,” said he, “a very nice gentleman from Georgia says that had it
not been for Bean Island people, that them men would never have been
killed.”
“It’s a lie! It’s a lie!” cried the Deacon, “and if they go on talking
that way, the whole cat will be let out at once. There an’t a word of
truth in it! There wa’n’t a Bean Island man shot a gun. Dr. Ava and
Joe Ennery guarded the prisoners, and when they were to be killed, they
were to be delivered into the hands of unknown parties that the law
couldn’t detect them. That was a plan laid before. They didn’t fire
a gun there, nor kill a man; _not one!_ There was nobody stayed over
there from Bean Island, but some drunken fellows that couldn’t get
away; and if they keep on talking in that way, the whole cat will get
out of the water.”
“Deacon Atwood, that was wrong then. You ought never to have killed
them men after taking them prisoners.”
Dea. A.—“I agree with you there.”
Uncle Jesse.—“They ought not to have killed them after they stopped
fighting.”
Dea. A.—“They ought never to have stopped fighting till they killed
them _in the fight_!”
Uncle Jesse.—“They didn’t kill any of them in the fight; they must
have been very poor marksmen, as many as they was there, and couldn’t
kill anybody, and had to wait till they got out of ammunition, and then
took ’em out and killed ’em. Why didn’t they let ’em be taken by the
law, and be tried and had justice done ’em?”
Dea. A.—“I suppose the men were so ambitious that they didn’t intend
they should live. Now I tell you, Jesse, what this Georgia gentleman
said, isn’t so. Bardon Ramol and Bob Blending met a young nigger this
morning just before they got to Horse Creek, a coming home, and Bardon
he says to him, ‘Now, don’t you go down there. Didn’t you hear the guns
down there last night? The last one is killed, and it’s all over, and
it an’t worth while to go.’”
Uncle Jesse.—“And so they got him to turn back? That’s well enough,
but not much.”
Dea. A.—“Yes. Now they’re accusing Sam Payne, and Tad Volier—that
little fellow not more’n four feet high—to day, and I’ll swear it’s a
lie; for them men were not killed by anybody that is on this side the
river.”
Jesse Roome did not tell his neighbor how well all this conversation
assured him that he was privy to all the plans, at least; but simply
asked, “Sam Payne was not there?”
Dea. A.—“No, Jesse, he wasn’t there.”
Uncle Jesse.—“Well, Deacon Atwood, I’ve always been a good friend to
you, and I’ve told you some things that the colored people were going
to do that was wrong, and we have been pretty confidential a great many
times; but I just tell you, sir, if you go to violating the law, then
I’ll back down. I will not stick for anybody that will violate the law.
My motto is to punish every man, white or black, that will violate the
law.”