Meanwhile the wagon containing Maxwell and surrounded by constables
stopped at the door of a frame building in the heart of the city, and
with blows and threats Warren was pushed and dragged into a bare room
and told that it was his quarters until business hours. The passageway
and room were filled with a motley crowd and the vilest epithets were
hurled after him. Presently a man came in with a lighted candle,
seized his sound arm and looked him over from head to foot in the most
insulting manner. Warren shook him off and asked him if he called
himself a man to so insult a wounded stranger.
“Don’t you dare speak to a white man except to answer questions, you
d----d nigger-thief!”
“I shall appeal to the British consul for protection from your vile
insults,” said Warren in desperation. “It will cost your government
dear for to-night’s business.”
“If you get the chance to complain,” laughed the ruffian. “By G--d!
you’ve got to die to-day, and by this revolver,” he continued, drawing
his weapon and brandishing it fiercely. He was applauded by the crowd,
and it looked as if Warren were doomed when constables arriving saved
further trouble. Maxwell felt that he would almost rather have been
burned than to endure the insults of such brutes.
After much entreaty, he succeeded in getting some water, but nothing
more, though almost famished. Burning with fever from his wound and his
contact with the funeral pile, and fainting for want of nourishment,
not having tasted food since the morning before, the young man felt
unable to sustain many more shocks to his system.
At length, without medical attendance, the crowd left him to get such
sleep as he might upon the bare floor, without bed or covering of any
kind. Retreating to a corner of the room, seated upon the floor with
his back to the wall, Warren passed the hours silent and motionless.
He meditated upon his position in the heart of a hostile country
although supposed to advocate and champion the most advanced ideas
of liberty and human rights. What a travesty the American government
was on the noblest of principles! Bah! it made him heartsick. He had
listened to the tales of Maybee and Steward as exaggerations; he had
not believed such scenes as he had just passed through, possible in a
civilized land. The words of the man who had just taunted him: “If you
get the chance to complain,” haunted him.
If he were not allowed to communicate with his consul, then, indeed,
hope was dead. What would be his fate? The misery in store for him
appalled him. And Winona--! He dared not allow his thoughts to dwell
upon her. That way madness lay. So the long hours dragged out their
weary length.
At eight o’clock breakfast was brought to him, and when he had begun
to despair of receiving medical aid, a doctor came in and dressed his
wounded arm. After this, he was marched through the streets to a
room in the hotel where he was placed before the glass doors--much as
is a wild beast caged in a menagerie. His reception was demoniacal.
Everybody was out. Again, while en route to the seat of Justice, he
endured the ignominy of oaths, yells and missiles; again the air
resounded with cries of “Give him hemp!” “The rope is ready!” And so
they arrived at the Court House.
The large unfinished room was filled to overflowing with the unwashed
Democracy of Missouri--a roof with bare brick walls and open rafters
overhead, from which hung down directly above the prisoner three
new ropes with the hangman’s knot at the end of each. Fierce faces,
rough and dirty, with the inevitable pipe, or tobacco saliva marking
the corners of the mouth, filled in the picture, while a running
accompaniment of the strongest and vilest oaths ears ever heard
suggested all the horrors of mob violence. The court proceeded with
its farcical mockery of justice. Warren undertook to act as his own
counsel, and drew up the following protest:
“I, the undersigned, a British subject, do hereby protest against every
step taken thus far by the State of Missouri in this case; declaring
that my rights as a British subject have been infamously violated and
trampled upon.
WARREN MAXWELL.”
This he handed to the magistrate, who, without giving it any attention,
threw it one side.
Colonel Titus and Bill Thomson were the principal witnesses against
him. The Colonel told how basely the young man had betrayed his
hospitality by aiding his slaves, Winona and Judah, to escape.
Thomson testified to the fact that the prisoner consorted with
abolitionists of the John Brown stripe, being, when captured, in
company with “fighting Steward,” a red-handed criminal.
The case was given to the jury who returned a verdict of “guilty,”
without leaving their seats. Then followed the judge’s charge and
sentence:
“Warren Maxwell--It is my duty to announce to you the decision of this
court as a penalty for the crime you have committed. You have been
guilty of aiding slaves to run away and depart from their master’s
service; and now, for it you are to die!”
“‘Remember now thy Creator in the days of my youth,’ is the language of
inspired wisdom. This comes home appropriately to you in this trying
moment. You are young; quite too young to be where you are. If you had
remembered your Creator in your past days, you would not now be in a
felon’s place, to receive a felon’s judgment. Still, it is not too late
to remember your Creator.”
“The sentence of the law is that you be taken to the State prison for
one year; and that there you be closely and securely confined until
Friday, the 26th day of May next; on which day, between the hours of
ten in the forenoon and two in the afternoon, you will be taken to the
place of public execution, and there be hanged by the neck till your
body be dead. And may God have mercy on your soul!”
Overwhelmed by the mockery of a trial, Warren heard the words of the
judge but they carried no meaning to his overwrought senses. He sat in
a stupor until hurried by the constables to the carriage that was to
convey him to prison.
Days of pain and unconsciousness followed, and when at last
consciousness returned, he found himself in a room sixteen feet square,
with a small grated window at each end, through which he could catch a
glimpse of the street.
Under the room in which he was confined was another of the same
size, used as a lock-up for slaves who were usually put there for
safe-keeping while waiting to be sent South. The room had a hole for
the stove-pipe of the under room to pass through, but the stove had
been removed to accommodate a larger number of prisoners. This left a
hole in the floor through which one might communicate with those below.
This hole in the floor afforded diversion for the invalid who could
observe the full operation of the slave system. Sometimes, too, he
could communicate with the slaves or some white prisoner by means of
the stove-hole. When all was quiet a note was sent down through the
hole, the signal being to punch with the broom-handle.
Many heart-rending scenes were enacted before his sight in the lower
room. Infamous outrages were committed upon free men of color whose
employment as cooks and stewards on steamers and sailing vessels had
brought them within the jurisdiction of the State. Such men were
usually taken ashore and sold to the highest bidder. One man who had
his free papers on his person, produced them to prove the truth of his
story; the official took the papers from him, burned them, and sold
him the next week at public auction. Two Negroes were whipped to death
rather than acknowledge the men who claimed them as their owners. One
horror followed another in the crowded cage where a frightful number
of human beings were herded together. They could not sleep; that is to
say, forget their misery for one moment. And how hot it was already!
The rays of the fierce summer sun of the South seemed to burn and sear
Warren’s suffering brain and dry up the healthful juices into consuming
fever and ultimate madness.
One day he was aroused to greater indignation than usual by hearing
heart-rending cries come from the lower room. Hurrying to the
stove-hole he gazed one moment and then fell fainting with terror and
nausea upon the floor. He had seen a Negro undergoing the shameful
outrage, so denounced in the Scriptures, and which must not be
described in the interests of decency and humanity.
That night Maxwell was again ill--delirious--requiring the care of two
physicians and a slave who was detailed to nurse him.
Unhappily we tell no tale of fiction. We have long felt that the mere
arm of restraint is but a temporary expedient for the remedy, but not
the prevention, of cruelty and crime. If Christianity, Mohammedanism,
or even Buddhism, did exercise the gentle and humanizing influence that
is claimed for them, these horrors would cease now that actual slavery
has been banished from our land; because, as religion is the most
universal and potent source of influence upon a nation’s action, so it
must mould to some extent its general characteristics and individual
opinions. Until we can find a religion that will give the people
individually and practically an impetus to humane and unselfish dealing
with each other, look to see outward forms change, but never look to
see the spirit which hates and persecutes that which it no longer dare
enslave, changed by any other influence than a change of heart and
spirit.
The liberties of a people are not to be violated but with the wrath of
God. Indeed, we tremble for our country when we reflect that God is
just; that His justice cannot sleep forever; that considering natural
means only, a revolution of the wheel of Fortune, an exchange of
situation is among the possibilities.
All through the long delirium of pain and weariness Warren was
conscious of the tender care of his nurse. To the sick man the wearing,
jarring sound of voices rising out of a black pit was ever present and
unbearable. At times they were to him the cries of the ruffians who
pursued him to the stake; the vengeance of the mob seemed to fill the
little room and charge the atmosphere with horror. Again it was the
sound of the pistol shot that killed Parson Steward, and the patient
would shudder at the blood everywhere--on shirts, hands and faces, and
splashing the sides of the bare walls; or it was the flames mounting
higher and higher, licking his body with hungry tongues, or it was the
rushing of whirling waters against the vessel’s side as he swung Winona
over the side of the “Crescent.”
Finally, as he lay tossing and tormented with these phantom terrors in
his eyes and ears, the sound died away into the soft hush of a tender
voice stilling the tumult.
The nurse was a young mulatto known as Allen Pinks. The boy had been
cook and head-waiter on board a steamboat on the Missouri river. He had
been paid off, according to his story, at St. Joseph. From there he had
started for Leavenworth, walking down the Missouri bank of the river
with a white man. At the ferry he was stopped on suspicion of being a
fugitive slave and lodged in the calaboose; from there he was removed
to the State prison until the time of sale. He had made himself very
useful about the jail doing chores and nursing the sick, for which he
seemed to have a particular vocation. Very soon Allen Pinks was a great
favorite and allowed many privileges; hearing of Maxwell’s illness he
asked to be allowed to nurse him, and the jailer was more than glad to
have him do it.
At last there came a day when the prisoner’s wild wide eyes were
closed, and the boy rose from his long watch by the side of the rude
cot bed with hope in his heart. He stood, for a second, looking down
upon the calm face of the sleeper with a sorrowful smile on his dark
brown face. “Fast asleep at last,” he whispered. “I must go see to his
broth.”
Just then a hideous yell arose from the room below. With a light bound
the lad reached the stove-hole.
“Hush your noise!” he called in a low tone of authority. “Haven’t I
told you he must sleep?”
“Got a black boss dis time,” came up from the hole in a gruff voice,
followed by a low laugh.
“He’s asleep now, and everything depends on his waking up right. But
you set up a howl that would wake the dead!”
“Howl? dat’s singing,” came again from the hole in the floor.
“Well, keep your singing to yourself.”
The noise subsided, and the young nurse turned again to his patient.
He stood for some moments gazing down on the Saxon face so pitifully
thin and delicate. The brow did not frown nor the lips quiver; no
movement of the muscles betrayed the hopeless despair of the sleeper’s
heart. The cot gave a creak and a rustle. The nurse was leaning one
hand on the edge of the miserable pallet bed bending over the sick man.
There was a light touch on his hair; a tear fell on his cheek; the
nurse had kissed the patient!
When the door had closed behind the lad, Warren opened his eyes in full
consciousness; and as he brushed the tear from his face, there came a
puzzled look into his eyes.
Presently Allen returned with the soup and found him awake. His
features lighted up with intelligence and sympathy on making the
discovery, and finding him free from fever.
“Well, how are you getting on, sir?” he asked in the softest of musical
voices, and feeling Warren’s pulse, as he seated himself on a stool at
the bedside.
“Who are you? Haven’t I met you somewhere? Your voice has a familiar
sound.”
“I fancy you don’t know me,” replied Allen with a smile.
“You’ve saved my life.”
“That’s a subject we won’t speak of just now, sir; you must be very
quiet.”
“Oh, to be well and free once more!” broke in a plaintive tone from the
invalid.
“If you will only remain quiet and easy in your mind, there’s no doubt
all may yet be well,” replied the boy with significant emphasis as he
held Warren’s eye a second with a meaning gaze.
Many questions came crowding to Warren’s lips; but Allen silenced him
firmly and gently.
“Bye and bye, sir, I will tell you all I can, but you must drink this
broth now and sleep.”
Warren drank the soup and with a feeling of peace new to him, turned
his face to the wall and slept.
One week longer Warren lay on his rude bed. Allen refused to talk but
told him that he had no cause for anxiety.
Maxwell was fascinated by his nurse; he thought him the prettiest
specimen of boyhood he had ever met. The delicate brown features were
faultless in outline; the closely cropped black hair was like velvet in
its smoothness. He could not shake off the idea that somewhere he had
known the lad before in his life. At times this familiarity manifested
itself in the tones of the voice soft and low as a woman’s, then again
it was in the carriage of the head or the flash of the beautiful large
dark eyes. It was an evasive but haunting memory.
One day Allen said: “Mr. Maxwell, I’m not to tend you any longer after
this week. I’m to be sold.”
“Sold!” ejaculated Warren in dismay.
Allen nodded. “It’s getting too hot for me, and I’m going to run for
it.”
“What shall I do without you?” said Warren with a sick feeling of
despair at his heart.
“Have you no hope of escape? Have you never thought of being rescued?”
asked the lad in a whisper with a cautious motion of the hand toward
the door.
“Oh, Allen!” faltered Warren in speechless joy.
The lad gave him time to recover himself a bit; then, after glancing
around the corridor to see that no one was listening, returned to his
patient.
“I am here in the interest of your friends! I leave to-night. Tomorrow
you will receive a communication from your friends. We must hasten our
plans for Thomson is expected on a visit here any day.”
“Go on; go on; tell me what to do.”
“There is nothing for you to do but to be ready at a moment’s notice.
The plans are all well laid, and will be successful, unless Thomson
should upset us.”
“I fear that man,” replied Warren with a shudder.
“You certainly have good reason,” said Allen. “But he does not reside
in this vicinity and we may be able to avoid him.”
“He would be only too happy to wreak his vengeance upon me. Yes, I fear
him.”
Allen did his best to reassure Warren, and discussed with him the plan
of escape as far as he knew it, and concluded by saying:
“I shall not see you again. Keep up your heart. Barring accident, you
will soon be free.”
At night Allen went as usual to the well to draw the water for supper,
and did not return. The alarm was given, but no trace of the boy was
found.