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Page 5
On the way to town my friend Buck Scruggs--he deserved a better
name--asked me to ride forward with him, and gave me this
information and advice. "You are now going to be tried by the
Phillips County Vigilance Committee on suspicion of being a Northern
man and an abolitionist. When you reach the grocery where they are
assembled, seat yourself on the counter in the back part of the
room, where if you have to defend yourself they cannot get behind
you. Make no studied defence, but calmly meet the charges at the
fitting time and in brief words. Keep cool, and use no language
which can be tortured into an offensive sense, and if possible I
will save you. If the worst comes, draw your pistols and be ready,
but don't shoot while ever there is hope, for you will of course be
killed the instant you kill any one else."
I listened very intently to this advice, given as coolly as if he
had been chatting about an every-day concern, and concluded that all
depended upon my coolness and steadiness of nerve when the final
struggle came, and resolved to sell my life dearly if it must be
sacrificed to the fury of a causeless persecution. To my
proposition to escape then, having a fleet horse, he would not
assent, as he had pledged his honor to take me to the Vigilance
Committee. Honor is as essential among lynchers as among thieves,
and all I could do was to brace myself for the encounter, of the
nature of which I had but an imperfect conception. About 12 o'clock
we reached the place, and I was ushered into the presence of fifty
or sixty as graceless scoundrels as even Arkansas can present, who
greeted me with hisses, groans, and cries of, "Hang him!" "Burn
him!" &c. Two-thirds of the mob were maddened by the vile liquor
which abounds in such localities, and few, if any, were entirely
sober. The hope that my innocence would protect me, which I had
cherished until now, vanished, for I well knew that drunken
cut-throats were blind to reason, and rather offended than attracted
by innocence.
Order was soon restored, and my friend Mr. Scruggs was called to the
chair. In this I saw a ray of hope. The constitution and by-laws of
the Vigilance Committee were read; the substance of which was, that
in the present troubled state of the country the citizens resolve
themselves into a court of justice to examine all Northern men, and
that any man of abolition principles shall be hung. The roll was
called, and I noticed that a large proportion of the men present
were members of the Committee; the others were boatmen and loafers
collected about the town. The court of Judge Lynch opened, and I was
put upon trial as an "Abolitionist whose business there was to
incite an insurrection among the slaves."
The first efforts of the chairman to get the witnesses to the point,
were unsuccessful. A mob is not an orderly body, and a drunken mob
is hard to manage. General charges were freely made without much
point. One cried out, because I refused to drink with them: "This
should hang him; he is too white-livered to take a dram with
gentlemen, let him swing." "Yes," shouted another; "he is a cursed
Yankee teetotaler, hang him." In a quiet way I showed them that this
was not the indictment, and that hanging would be a severe
punishment for such a sin of omission. To this rejoinder some
assented, and the tide seemed for a moment to be setting in my
favor, when another urged, "He is too 'tarnal smart for this
country. He talks like a Philadelphia lawyer."--Arkansas would be a
poor place for the members of the legal profession from the city of
brotherly love.--"He comes here to teach us ignorant backwoodsmen.
We'll show him a new trick, how to stretch hemp, the cursed Yankee."
At length the chairman got them to the specified crime. "An
abolitionist! An abolitionist!" they cried with intense rage,--some
of them were too drunk to pronounce the word,--but the more sober
ones prevailed, and they examined the evidence. The hearsay amounted
to nothing, and they plied me with questions as to my views on
slavery. I answered promptly, but briefly and honestly, that I held
no views on that subject to which they _should_ object, and that I
had never interfered with the institution since I came among them,
nor did I intend to do so. My calmness seemed to baffle them for a
moment, but the bottle was passed, and I noticed that all reason
fled from the great majority. Words grew hot and fierce, and eyes
flashed fire, while some actually gnashed their teeth in rage. I saw
that the mob would soon be uncontrollable unless the chairman
brought matters to an end, and suggested, that as there was no
evidence against me, they should bring the trial to a close, when to
my surprise they produced the letter written to my father but
thirty-six hours before, as proof conclusive that I was a Northern
abolitionist. I then saw, what I have had abundant evidence of
since, that the United States mail was subject to the inspection of
Vigilance Committees in the South at their pleasure. The ruffianism
of these scoundrels did not allow them even to apologize for their
crime. The only phrase in the letter objected to was the unfortunate
but truthful one, "This is a hard place." I never felt its force as
at that instant. It served as a catch-word for more abuse. "Yes, we'll
make it a hard place for you before you get out of it, you infernal
spy," &c. The chairman argued rather feebly as I thought--but he
understood his audience better than I did--that the letter was free
from any proof against me, that I was an innocent-looking youth and
had behaved myself correctly, that I evidently did not know much
about their peculiar institution, and he thought I had no designs
against it. They then went into a private consultation, while I kept
my place upon the counter, though gradually moving back to the
further edge of it. I saw the crisis was at hand, for smothered but
angry argument was going on in knots of men all over the room; my
life was suspended upon a breath, and I was utterly powerless to
change the decision, whatever it might be; but I must say that my
nerves were steady and my hand untrembling,--the unwonted calmness
of one who knew that death was inevitable if they should decide in
the affirmative on the charge, and who was determined to defend
himself to the last, as I well knew any death, they could _there_
inflict, was better than to fall into their hands to be tormented by
their hellish hate.
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