The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive/Chapter 54
As I entered the town of Vicksburg, an appalling prospect met my eyes: five men hanging by the neck, just swung off, as it would seem, from an extempore gallows, and struggling in the agonies of death; a military company drawn up in arms; a band of black musicians playing Yankee Doodle; a crowd of bystanders, of all ages and colors, apparently in the greatest state of excitement; and a frantic woman, with a young child in either hand, addressing herself, with vehement gesticulations, to a man who seemed to have the direction of the proceedings, and whom I took — though I did not perceive that he wore any official dress or badge — to be the high sheriff of the county.
On reaching the hotel, I learnt, however, to my great astonishment, that this was no regular execution by process of law, but entirely an amateur performance, got up by a committee of citizens, headed by the cashier of the Planters' Bank, — one of those institutions whose bonds are not unknown in England, though I believe they bear no particular price at the present moment, — the very person, in fact, whom, from the office he had assumed, I had supposed to be the high sheriff I learnt all this with astonishment, because the victims had appeared to be white men. Had they been black or colored, their being hung in some paroxysm of popular passion or fear would not in the least have surprised me.
Inquiring a little further into the history of this singular proceeding, I was told that the men who had been hung were gamblers, part of a gang of cheats and desperadoes by whom that town had long been infested; that the citizens, determined to tolerate such a nuisance no longer, had ordered them to depart, and, when they refused to do so, had proceeded to force their houses and destroy their gambling tools — an operation which the gamblers resisted by force, firing upon their assailants, and having actually shot dead a leading and very estimable citizen, in the act of forcing his way into one of the houses.
The gamblers, however, had all been taken, except two or three, who had managed to escape. The blood of the company was up. The sight of their slaughtered leader, copious draughts of brandy, the recollection of their own losses at the gaming table, and the dread of being challenged and shot, or shot without being challenged by the gamblers, two or three of whom were known as very desperate fellows, — all these motives coöperating, and it being very doubtful whether, if the matter was referred to the legal tribunals, those who had riotously broken into the houses of other people, even with the professed object of destroying roulette tables, might not run quite as much risk of condemnation as those who had fired, even with fatal effect, upon their burglarious assailants, — all these things considered, it had: finally been determined, as the shortest and most expedient method of settling the business, to take the gamblers to the skirts of the town, and to hang them there on the instant.
To those, indeed, accustomed to the curt proceedings of the slave code, under which suspicion serves for evidence, and power usurps the place of judicial discrimination, all the delays and formalities of the ordinary administration of penal jurisprudence must seem tedious and absurd; and hence the constantly increasing tendency in the south to substitute, in the place of that administration, in the case of white men as well as of slaves, the summary process of Lynch law. It is vain, indeed, to expect that men constantly hardened and brutalized in the struggle to extort from their slaves the utmost driblet of unwilling labor, and accustomed freely to indulge, as against these unresisting victims, every caprice of brutal fury, should retain any very delicate sense of the proprieties of justice as among themselves.
Before I had yet learnt more than a general outline of the story, the principal actors in this affair, finding it necessary to sustain their dignity and to recruit their self-reliance by fresh draughts of brandy, reached the hotel at which I was stopping. They were followed by the woman, with the two little children, whom I had noticed as I passed the place of execution, and whom I now found to be the wife of one of the victims. It was in vain that she besought permission to take down and to bury the body of her husband. This was denied, with brutal threats that any person who dared to cut them down till they had hung there twenty-four hours, by way of example, should be made to share their fate. Such, indeed, was the passionate fury of the multitude, that the poor woman, in alarm for her own life, fled to the river bank, and, placing her two children in a skiff, entered herself, and pushed off, thinking this a safer course than to remain longer at Vicksburg.
After the tumult had subsided a little, I showed the bar-keeper the direction of the letter of introduction I had brought, and inquired if he knew such a person.
No sooner had he read the name than his face assumed an expression of horror and alarm. "Do you know that person?" he eagerly inquired.
I told him I did not. This was my first visit to this part of the country. The letter had been given me by a gentleman whom I had met at Augusta.
"Pray don't mention the name," he replied; "say nothing of it to any body. This letter is addressed to one of the persons whom you saw hung as you came into the town. He kept a roulette table, no doubt, and understood a thing or two; but was a generous hearted soul for all that; and every way quite as much a gentleman as half those concerned in hanging him. Should you mention his name, you might yourself be seized as one of the gang, and hung with the rest."
Congratulating myself on this lucky escape, I then ventured to inquire of the bar-keeper if he knew a planter in that vicinity of the name of Thomas.
There had been, he told me, a planter of that name, — and from the account he gave of him, I was satisfied it was the one of whom I was in search, — who lived formerly a few miles off; but within two or three years past he had moved to a distance of some fifty miles, in Madison county, up the Big Black, The friendly bar-keeper aided me the next day in procuring a horse, and I set out for Madison county, again passing; as I left the town, the five murdered gamblers still swinging from the gallows.
Proceeding up the Big Black, I presently found that the spirit of extempore hanging was by no means confined to Vicksburg, but raged as a sort of epidemic in all that part of the state of Mississippi.
The counties of Hinds and Madison were excited to a pitch of terror bordering on madness, by the rumor of a slave insurrection. Some overseers, lurking among the negro cabins, had obtained some hint of a conspiracy; and two white steam doctors from Tennessee, through the instigation of two or three of the regular craft, — who regarded these "steamers," with no little jealousy and indignation, and who insisted that they were nothing but horse thieves in disguise, — had been arrested, along with two or three negroes, as concerned in the plot.
A vigilance committee and volunteer courts had been speedily organized, and the black and white prisoners condemned to death. Brought out to: be hanged, they had been urged to confess, which they had done very extensively, in the hope, probably, of saving their lives; and from their confessions, dressed up by the lively imagination of the court and the bystanders, the plot, whether real or imaginary, had been made to assume a most alarming shape.
According to these confessions, it was not a mere negro or servile plot, but had been got up by a gang of white desperadoes, negro thieves, horse thieves, gamblers, and other ingenious gentlemen who lived by their wits, to whom were ascribed ideas as to the rights of the cunningest and the strongest — precisely those to be expected in a slaveholding community. They were to put themselves at the head of the insurgent negroes, were to rob the banks, and thus, like so many Catilines, to make themselves masters of the country.
Unable to reach my destination the first day, I sought hospitality for the night at the house of a planter, one of the most respectable men, as I was afterwards told, in all that vicinity, but who, instead of putting himself forward, as was expected of him, to take the lead in unravelling the plot and punishing its authors, had chosen to remain quietly at home.
He had great doubts, I found, whether there was, in fact, any plot, and whether the whole thing was not a chimera of the imagination. Alarms of negro plots, founded on alleged overheard conversations, and throwing every body, especially the women and children, into the most horrible panics, were as much epidemics, he told me, all through the south, as the autumn bilious fevers. He was too much accustomed to those alarms, which had always, so far as he knew, ended in smoke, or the hanging of a few negroes on suspicion, to pay much attention to them. Yet he admitted that the increasing number, at the south, of desperate and uneasy white men, without property or the means to acquire any, might be likely, as the present resource failed of helping one's self to a plantation by squatting on government lands, to lead hereafter to frightful commotions.
We were quietly discussing this subject over a cup of tea, when two or three truculent looking white men rode up to the house; and one of them, dismounting, handed a dirty and rumpled piece of paper to my host.
As he read it, his brows began to lower. It was, in fact, a summons or requisition from the committee of vigilance for his speedy personal appearance before them, bringing with him, also, the stranger — meaning me — who had been traced to his house.
Upon his inquiring of the bearer what the committee of vigilance wanted of him, the answer was, that his not taking any part in the proceedings had been thought very strange, and that some of the confessing prisoners had stated something by which he was implicated.
To all this he coolly replied, that he was ready to answer for his conduct before any regular court,
but he did not recognize the authority of the committee of vigilance. "As to this gentleman, my guest," he continued, "I am a justice of the peace, and if you will bring proof against him of any violation of the laws, I will issue a warrant for his arrest; but, except on some lawful warrant, I shall not suffer him to be taken from my house."
The only ground of suspicion against me seemed to be, that I was a stranger, who ought not to be allowed to traverse the country, in its present state of alarm, without giving an account of myself. But as my host did not think this a sufficient ground for the issue of a warrant, the messengers of the vigilance committee shortly departed; not without furious threats of returning soon with men enough to take us both by force, and pretty plain intimations that after this resistance to the authority of the committee, which could be looked upon in no other light than as plain proof of our concern in the plot, we could reasonably expect nothing short of hanging. Six white men, and eighteen negroes, they added, had been hung already, and many more had been arrested.
No sooner had these fellows gone, than I turned to my host to thank him for his protection; but almost before replying to me, he ordered two horses to be saddled. "I wish I could protect you," he added; "but though I mean to stand a siege myself, and shall rely, if compelled to surrender, upon my numerous friends and connections to shield me, it would not be safe for you to remain.
"Your horse is hardly fit for a new start; but I will give you a fresh one, and will send yours back to Vicksburg. You shall have my negro man Sambo for a guide. He knows the country well, and, if any body can, will carry you safe to the banks of the Mississippi, for which you had better make by the shortest cut. Steamboats are passing continually up and down. Get on board the first that comes along, and forego your travels in these parts for the present." No sooner said than done. In fifteen minutes I was again on the road; and travelling all night, under the skilful guidance of Sambo, following unfrequented paths, swimming creeks and rivers, and fording swamps, by morning we reached a lonely wood yard on the banks of the river, where the steamers were accustomed to stop for fuel. Before long, a boat bound to New Orleans made its appearance, and, upon a signal for that purpose, she checked her course for the moment, and sent a skiff to take me on board.
A few days after arriving in New Orleans, I read in the newspapers how the house of Mr Hooper — for that was the name of my generous host — had been attacked; how he had barricaded his doors and windows; had wrapped his infant child in a feather bed, and, not venturing to employ any of his slaves to assist him, had alone defended the house, keeping the assailants at bay for some time, and dangerously wounding one of their number; nor had he surrendered till the breaking of his arm by a musket ball had made it impossible for him any longer to load and fire. His case — as I afterwards learnt, when he was brought before the vigilance committee — had been a subject of vehement controversy; but as his connections were numerous and powerful, the comag did not dare to proceed to extremities against him.