“You have done your worst to me. I am dying now. In a week I shall be
dead, so it does not matter if you kill me now.”
“What do you with that?” the master asked, pointing to the arm; and the
slave made answer--
“I take it back to the pen to give it burial. Tom Dixon was my friend.
We worked beside each other at our looms.”
There is little more to my tale, brothers. The slave and the arm were
sent back in a cart to the pen. Nor were any of the slaves punished for
what they had done. Indeed, Roger Vanderwater made investigation and
punished the two overseers, Joseph Clancy and Adolph Munster. Their
freeholds were taken from them. They were branded, each upon the
forehead, their right hands were cut off, and they were turned loose
upon the highway to wander and beg until they died. And the fund was
managed rightfully thereafter for a time--for a time only, my brothers;
for after Roger Vanderwater came his son, Albert, who was a cruel master
and half mad.
Brothers, that slave who carried the arm into the presence of the master
was my father. He was a brave man. And even as his mother secretly
taught him to read, so did he teach me. Because he died shortly after
from the pick-handle beating, Roger Vanderwater took me out of the slave
pen and tried to make various better things out of me. I might
have become an overseer in Hell's Bottom, but I chose to become a
story-teller, wandering over the land and getting close to my brothers,
the slaves, everywhere. And I tell you stories like this, secretly,
knowing that you will not betray me; for if you did, you know as well as
I that my tongue will be torn out and that I shall tell stories no more.
And my message is, brothers, that there is a good time coming, when all
will be well in the world and there will be neither masters nor slaves.
But first you must prepare for that good time by learning to read. There
is power in the printed word. And here am I to teach you to read, and as
well there are others to see that you get the books when I am gone
along upon my way--the history books wherein you will learn about your
masters, and learn to become strong even as they.
[EDITOR'S NOTE.--From “Historical Fragments and Sketches,” first
published in fifty volumes in 4427, and now, after two hundred years,
because of its accuracy and value, edited and republished by the
National Committee on Historical Research.]