The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive/Chapter 39
Returning to Richmond, I found that consequential little town still in a state of the- greatest alarm. The whole ordinary course of law had been set aside, and a self-constituted committee of vigilance assuming to dictate to the citizens what newspapers they should be allowed to receive, and what books to read, or to have in their houses. At such a moment, it was very easy to fall under suspicion; and unfortunately, just before setting out on my late excursion, I had drawn attention to myself at the dinner table, by an unlucky jest at the fright into which the great state of Virginia had been thrown by a few _ picture books; for it was the cuts with which some of the abolition tracts were illustrated which seemed to inspire the greatest alarm. My coming back redoubled their suspicions. I had hardly had time to wash and dress myself, when I was waited upon by three grave-looking gentlemen, among the most respectable citizens of the town, as the landlord assured me, and in terms polite, but very peremptory, they required me to make my immediate appearance before the vigilance committee, then sitting-in the town.
I had brought letters to a merchant of the place, whom I found, like most of the merchants in the southern towns, to be a northern man by birth, and from whom, on the presentation of my letters on my first arrival, I had received the usual attentions. With some difficulty, I obtained leave from the bailiffs of the vigilance committee to send for this leman, and also for another, whom I had met at his house at dinner, and whom I understood to be a leading lawyer. The merchant soon sent me an apology for not coming. His wife had suddenly been seized with an alarming sickness, which made it impossible for him to leave her. But when I read this note to the three volunteer bailiffs, who still remained with me, regaling themselves with mint juleps at my expense, they heard it with an incredulous smile; and one of them exclaimed, "What more could you expect of the sneaking Yankee? He means to keep himself out of harm's way, at all events."
The lawyer soon made his appearance, and having accepted a fee, entered with great apparent, and I dare say real, zeal into my case. I begged to know whether those who had summoned me before them possessed any legal authority, and whether I was bound to pay any attention to their summons. I had supposed, I said, that the state of Virginia was a country of laws, and that I could only be held to answer to some charge sworn against me before some magistrate. Was I obliged to submit to a personal examination before this vigilance committee? To this my friendly lawyer replied, that in the present state of alarm, the law was suspended. The necessity of self-preservation rose above all law; and in the imminent danger to which the whole southern states were exposed, — the breaking out of a pas slave insurrection, — every thing must be sacrificed to the safety of the community. The throats of the white inhabitants, the purity of their wives and daughters, were at risk. Two Yankee schoolmasters had been warned out of the town the day before, and nothing but the earnest efforts of himself and a few others, and their own prudence in not attempting the slightest resistance to this mandate, had saved them from the indignity, perhaps, of a public flogging, and a coat of tar and feathers. As it was, they had been obliged to fly because they had not known how to hold their foolish Yankee tongues this perhaps was a sly hit at my own imprudent freedom of speech, — the chief witness and informant against them being a fellow whom one of them had sued the day before, to recover payment for several quarters' schooling for his children, and who, so the lawyer seemed to intimate, had taken this compendious method of squaring the account. It would be safest for me, in the present excited state of the public mind, if I wished to save myself from disagreeable personal indignities, to pay the greatest deference to the committee and their orders; and he would do his best to get me off as easily as possible.
Having found, upon inquiry, that the English consul was absent from the city, I hastened with my lawyer to wait upon the vigilance committee, and the more so, as a second detachment of volunteer bailiffs had already arrived, rather ominously backed by a mob, collected before the door of the hotel, with orders to bring me by force, if I delayed any longer. Those who had me in charge did their best to protect me, yet I did not entirely escape without insults from the crowd.
Having arrived in the august presence of the committee, I found myself obliged to submit to a very stringent examination on the part of the chairman, a sharp-nosed, gray-eyed gentleman, and in spectacles, deacon, I was told, of a Presbyterian church. He inquired-as to my name, birthplace, occupation, and object in visiting the country; which I stated to be, to observe its manners and customs, and in fact, as I added, I had found them very singular indeed, and well worthy of a traveller's curiosity. I might, however, as Well have kept my observations to myself, for this sally brought a scowl blacker than before across the brows of the very solemn-looking committee, and a reproving shake of the head and glance of the eye from my friendly lawyer, who sat in one corner, but who was not allowed to take any part in the proceedings.
Tn the course of my answers, I had referred to my letter of introduction brought to the merchant, to whom a message was immediately sent, to come before the committee, and to bring that letter with him. His wife must have recruited very suddenly, for in a surprisingly short time the merchant made his appearance, with the letter in his hand; the sweat running down his face, and the poor man trembling in an agony of terror, that went far to raise grave suspicions against both him and me. The letter happened to be from Tappan, Wentworth, & Co., well-known bankers, of Liverpool. No sooner had the chairman read the signature, than his face, though quite long and serious enough before, underwent a very sudden elongation; his eyebrows rising up like those of a man who had just seen a ghost, or something else very terrible — "Tappan! Tappan!" he repeated to himself several times, in a sharp, quick, but snivelling tone — "Tappan! Tappan! there we have it; a bloody emissary, no doubt! That, you know," he continued, turning to his colleagues, "is the name of the New York silk merchant, who is one of the leaders in this nefarious conspiracy, and who has given I don't know how many thousand dollars to circulate these horrid incendiary tracts. How I wish I had the rascal here now! I should rejoice to be one to help put a rope round his neck. Ah, Mr Doeface," he added, with an ominous nod to the poor trembling merchant to whom the letter was addressed, and a look in which indignation and commiseration were about equally mingled — "ah, Mr Doeface, I am very sorry to find that you have any such correspondents."
Exclamations, threats, and oaths resounded from all sides of the crowded hall, and before either Mr Doeface, who seemed indeed past speaking, or I, could get in a word, messengers were despatched to search the merchant's house from garretto cellar, and his warehouses also, in hopes of discovering some of the obnoxious tracts, while others were deputed to break open and examine my trunks; which breaking open, however, I prevented by handing out my keys. Meanwhile, with very great difficulty, I brought the honorable chairman and his colleagues to perceive that the letter which had produced so great a commotion was dated, not at New York, but at Liverpool; and as I happened to have in my pocket book two or three other letters of credit from the same firm to merchants in Charleston and New Orleans, I at length succeeded in making it understood, that my letter of introduction was not, after all, such palpable evidence of treason and sedition as had, at first, been supposed.
Luckily, my friend, the Yankee merchant, had but very little of a literary turn. After a thorough search of his premises, the committee of inspection were able to discover nothing except a number of picture books belonging to his children, and some twenty or thirty pamphlets, all of which were brought in for the critical inspection of the vigilance committee. At the pie of the picture books, the committee grew very solemn, and the chairman cast another look over the top of his spectacles, half of pity and half of reproach, at the Yankee merchant, whose teeth began to chatter worse than ever, and who rolled up the whites of his great eyes in as perfect an agony as if he had just been caught in the very act of horse stealing or forgery. But after a solemn and serious inspection, during which the whole assembled multitude held their breath, clinched their fists, set their teeth, and looked daggers at the suspected offender, nothing worse appeared than Jack the Giant Killer and Little Red Riding Hood. One very fierce-looking old gentleman on the committee, with puffing cheeks and bloodshot eyes, apparently not very familiar with juvenile literature, and a little the worse for liquor, thought there was something rather murderous in these representations, especially as the pictures were pretty highly colored. But his colleagues assured him that. these were very ancient books, which had been long in circulation, and though, perhaps, considered in themselves, like the Declaration of Independence, the History of Moses and the Deliverance of the Israelites, as recorded in the Bible, or the Virginia Bill of Rights, they might seem to have rather a malign aspect, yet they could not be set down as belonging to that class of incendiary or abolition publications, the having which in one's possession would be proof of conspiracy.
With myself it came near going considerably. worse. As ill luck would have it, the only book that I happened to have in my trunk was a volume of Sterne's Sentimental Journey; and that unlucky volume happened to have for a frontispiece a prisoner chained in a dungeon, and underneath, by way of motto, Sterne's celebrated exclamation, "Disguise thyself as thou wilt, still Slavery, still thou art a bitter draught, and though thousands have been made to drink thee, none the less bitter on that account!"
The production of this book, with this horrible frontispiece to it, and incendiary motto, evidently produced a profound sensation. The great eyes of my friend, the Yankee merchant, dilated almost to saucers at the sight of it. But, fortunately, several of the members of the committee were pretty well read in light literature, and were able to assure the assembled multitude that Lawrence Sterne was no abolitionist. It was not difficult to perceive, that two or three of the gentlemen on the committee, though it is by no means easy to rise above the contagion of popular passion, however absurd, were perfectly aware of the ridiculous light in which themselves and the community to which they belonged must appear in my eyes. But they did not dare to suggest any such idea, lest they should be suspected of lack of sensibility to the public danger, or a disposition to shield abolitionists. Indeed, it was quite enough to do away any tendency to laugh — the thought that before a less well-read committee of vigilance, as might easily happen in the rural districts, the having in a man's trunk a stray volume with an unfortunate frontispiece, might subject him to summary punishment as a plotter of rebellion and murder.
Finally, after a most thorough, searching, and deliberate examination, conducted, as the Richmond newspapers of the next day had it, "with the greatest decorum, and with the strictest regard to every principle of equity," the evidence against me resolved itself into the unlucky witticism about the picture books, in which I had indulged at the hotel dinner table; a piece of personal-disrespect for the commonwealth of Virginia and the institution of slavery, which it was impossible for me to deny, and which I was circumstantially testified to by no less than seven witnesses.
The committee, however, wishing, as they said, to Saar as far as possible, the ancient reputation of Virginia for hospitality, in consideration that I was a stranger and a foreigner, saw fit to dismiss me unpunished; not, however, without a long exhortation half way between a scolding and a sermon, delivered in a rasping nasal tone, by the sharp-nosed, grayeyed chairman, in which he dwelt with great unction, even with tears in his eyes, upon the sin and danger of jesting about sacred things; nor did he wind up without a hint, that, all things considered, I might as well leave Richmond at my earliest convenience.