“What is that?” said he, surprised.
“A Papist,–a Catholic!”
“Ah!” he returned, sighing, “once I was _bon Catholique_,–once in my gone youth; after then I was nothing but the poor man who bats for his life; now I am of the religion that shelters the stranger and binds up the broken poor.”
Monsieur was a diplomatist. This melted Miss Lucinda’s orthodoxy right down; she only said,–
“Then you will go to church with me?”
“And to the skies above, I pray,” said Monsieur, kissing her knotty hand like a lover.
So in the earliest autumn they were married, Monsieur having previously presented Miss Lucinda with a delicate plaided gray silk for her wedding attire, in which she looked almost young; and old Israel was present at the ceremony, which was briefly performed by Parson Hyde in Miss Manners’s parlor. They did not go to Niagara, nor to Newport; but that afternoon Monsieur Leclerc brought a hired rockaway to the door, and took his bride a drive into the country. They stopped beside a pair of bars, where Monsieur hitched his horse, and, taking Lucinda by the hand, led her into Farmer Steele’s orchard, to the foot of his biggest apple-tree. There she beheld a little mound, at the head and foot of which stood a daily rose-bush shedding its latest wreaths of bloom, and upon the mound itself was laid a board on which she read,
“Here lie the bones of poor Piggy.”
Mrs. Lucinda burst into tears, and Monsieur, picking a bud from the bush, placed it in her hand, and led her tenderly back to the rockaway.
That evening Mrs. Lucinda was telling the affair to old Israel with so much feeling that she did not perceive at all the odd commotion in his face, till, as she repeated the epitaph to him, he burst out with,–“He didn’t say what become o’ the flesh, did he?”–and therewith fled through the kitchen-door. For years afterward Israel would entertain a few favored auditors with his opinion of the matter, screaming till the tears rolled down his cheeks,–
“That was the beateree of all the weddin’-towers I ever heerd tell on. Goodness! it’s enough to make the Wanderin’ Jew die o’ larfin’!”
* * * * *
A SOLDIER’S ANCESTRY.
When Nadir asked a princess for his son, And Delhi’s throne required his pedigree, He stared upon the messenger as one
Who should have known his birth of bravery.
“Go back,” he cried, in undissembled scorn, “And bear this answer to your waiting lord:– ‘My child is noble! for, though lowly born, He is the son and grandson of the _Sword_!'”
FIBRILIA.
There are not a few timid souls who imagine that England is falling into decay. Our Cousin John is apt to complain. He has been accustomed to enlarge upon his debts, his church-rates and poor-rates, his taxes on air, light, motion, “everything, from the ribbons of the bride to the brass nails of the coffin,” upon the wages of his servants both on the land and the water, upon his Irish famine and exodus, and his vast expenses at home and abroad. And when we consider how small is his homestead, a few islands in a high latitude inferior to those of Japan in size and climate, and how many of his family have left him to better their condition, one might easily conclude that he had passed his meridian, and that his prospects were as cloudy as his atmosphere.
But our Cousin John, with a strong constitution, is in a green old age, and still knows how to manage his property.
Within the last two years he has quietly extinguished sixty millions of his debts in terminable annuities. He has improved his outlying lands of Scotland and Ireland, ransacked the battle-fields of Europe for bone-dust and the isles of the Pacific for guano, and imported enough to fertilize four millions of acres, and, not content with the produce of his home-farm, imports the present year more than four millions of tons of grain and corn to feed nineteen millions of his people.
He has carried his annual exports up to six hundred and thirty millions of dollars, and importing more than he exports still leaves the world his debtor. He has a strong fancy for new possessions, and selects the most productive spots for his plantations. When he desired muslin, calico, and camel’s-hair shawls for his family, he put his finger on India; and when he called for those great staples of commerce, indigo, saltpetre, jute, flax, and linseed, India sent them at his bidding. When he required coffee, he found Ceylon a Spice Island, and at his demand it furnished him with an annual supply of sixty millions of pounds. He required more sugar for his coffee, and by shipping a few coolies from Calcutta and Bombay to the Mauritius, once the Isle of France, it yields him annually two hundred and forty million pounds of sugar, more than St. Domingo ever yielded in the palmy days of slavery. He wanted wool, and his flocks soon overspread the plains of Australia, tendering him the finest fleeces, and his shepherds improved their leisure not in playing like Tityrus on the reed, but in opening for him mines of copper and gold. He had his eye on California, but Fremont was too quick for him, and he now contents himself with pocketing a large proportion of her gold, to say nothing of the silver of Mexico and Peru.
Wherever there is a canal to be excavated, a railway to be built, or a line of steamers to be established, our Cousin John is ready with a full purse to favor the enterprise. He turns even his sailors and soldiers to good account: the other day he subdued one hundred and fifty millions of rebels in the Indies, and then we find him dictating a treaty of peace and a tribute to the Emperor of China from the ruins of his summer-palace and the walls of Pekin. Although generally well disposed, especially towards his kith and kin this side the water, he is choleric, and if his best customers treat him ill, he does not hesitate to knock them down. Although dependent on Russia for his hemp and naval stores, and on China for his raw silk and teas, he suffers no such considerations to deter him from fighting, and usually gets some advantage when he comes to terms. He is belting the world with colonies, and forming agencies for his children wherever he can send the messengers of his commerce. At this very moment he is considering whether he shall transport coolies from China to Australia, Natal, or the Feegee Islands, to raise his cotton and help put down Secession and export-duties, or whether he shall give a new stimulus to India cotton by railways and irrigation. He seems to prosper in all his business; for the “Edinburgh Review” reports him worth six thousand millions of pounds, at least,–a very comfortable provision for his family.
The wealth and power of Great Britain are supposed to rest upon her mines of iron and coal. These undoubtedly help to sustain the fabric. With her iron and coal, she fashions and propels the winged Mercuries of her commerce; with these and the clay that underlies her soil, she erects her factories and workshops; these form the Briarean arms by which she fabricates her tissues. But it is by more minute columns than these, it is by the hollow tubes revealed by the microscope, the fibres of silk, wool, and flax, hemp, jute, and cotton, that she sustains the great structure of her wealth. These she spins, weaves, and prints into draperies which exact a tribute from the world. During the year 1860 Great Britain imported or produced a million tons of such fibres, an amount equal to five million bales of cotton, more than one-half of which were in cotton alone. These fibres it is our purpose to examine.
* * * * *
The thread of the silk-worm came early into use. The Chinese ascribe its introduction to the wife of one of their emperors, to whom divine honors were subsequently paid. Until the Christian era silk was little known in Europe or Western Asia. It is mentioned but three times in the common version of the Old Testament, and in each case the accuracy of the translation is questioned by German critics. It is, however, distinctly alluded to by St. John, by Aristotle, and by the poets who flourished at the court of Augustus, Virgil, Horace, and Tibullus, and is referred to by the writers of the first four centuries. Tertullian, in his homily on Female Attire, tells the ladies,–“Clothe yourselves with the silk of truth, with the fine linen of sanctity, and the purple of modesty.” The golden-mouthed St. Chrisostom writes in his Homilies,–“Does the rich man wear silken shawls? His soul is in tatters.” “Silken shawls are beautiful, but they are the production of worms.”
The silken thread was early introduced. Galen recommends it for tying blood-vessels in surgical operations, and remarks that the rich ladies in the cities of the Roman Empire generally possessed such thread; he alludes also to shawls interwoven with gold, the material of which is brought from a distance, and is called _Sericum_, or silk. Down to the time of the Emperor Aurelian silk was of great value, and used only by the rich. His biographer informs us that Aurelian neither had himself in his wardrobe a garment composed wholly of silk, nor presented any to others, and when his own wife begged him to allow her a single shawl of purple silk, he replied,–“Far be it from me to permit thread to be balanced with its weight in gold!”–for a pound of gold was then the price of a pound of silk.
Silk is mentioned in some very ancient Arabic inscriptions; but down to the reign of the Emperor Justinian was imported into Europe from the country of the Seres, a people of Eastern Asia, supposed to be the Chinese, from, whom it derived its name. During the reign of Justinian two monks brought the eggs of the silkworm to Byzantium from Serinda in India, and the manufacture of silk became a royal monopoly of the Roman Empire.
From Greece the culture of silk was gradually carried into Italy and Spain, and English abbots and bishops often returned from Rome with vestments of silk and gold. Silken threads are attached to the covers of ancient English manuscripts. Silk in the form of velvet may be seen on some of the ancient armor in the Tower of London; and portions of silk garments were found in 1827 in the Cathedral of Durham, on opening the tomb of St. Cuthbert. The use of silk, however, was so rare in England down to the time of the Tudors, that a pair of silk hose formed an acceptable present to Queen Elizabeth.
The principal supply of raw silk is now derived from China, where silks are much worn, and there Marco Polo several centuries since found silk robes in very general use. Japan also abounds in silk, and the late Japanese embassy and suite were arrayed in garments of that material.
The annual consumption of raw silk in Great Britain now averages seven millions of pounds, and the value of the annual export of silk fabrics is not far from ten millions of dollars.
The manufacture of silk was introduced into England by the French Protestants who were driven into exile on the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Their descendants are still found in London and Coventry, where the silk-trade has been long established, and is now going through the ordeal to which it has been exposed by the new treaty with France.
The French undoubtedly take the lead in silk fabrics, for which they are admirably qualified by exquisite taste and great artistic skill; but the silk manufacture in England is now so interwoven, in many of its branches, with the manufacture of wool and cotton, and aided by improved machinery, that it may be considered as firmly established.
Our own climate is well adapted to the silk-worm, and we have had our _Morus-multicaulis_ fever; but so light is the freight on silk compared with its value, that we must defer our hope of any extended growth until the price of labor in Europe approaches nearer to our own, or until the excess of production in other branches shall divert genius into this channel, in which it will eventually cheapen production by machinery as it has done in other enterprises.
* * * * *
We read in the classics of the Colchian and Milesian fleeces, of the soft wools of Italy, and of the transfer of sheep from Italy to Bastica, in Spain. Italy and Spain were both adapted to sheep husbandry. Virgil writes,–
“Hic gelidi fontes, hie mollia prata, Lycori”;
while Spain, with her alternations of hill and dale and her varying climate, was eminently fitted for the pasturage of sheep. Even in ancient times Spain furnished wool of great fineness and of various colors, and cloths like the modern plaids were woven there from wool of different shades. Sometimes the Spanish sheep was immersed alive in the Tyrian purple.
In modern times, the sheep of Spain have been introduced into France and Germany, and from them have sprung the French merino and Saxony varieties. These again have been exported to Natal and Australia.
Before the American Revolution, the sheep of this country furnished a wool so coarse that English travellers reported that America could never compete with England in broadcloth. But when the French armies overran Spain, the vast flocks of merinos which annually traversed the country in search of fresh pasturage were driven into Portugal, and by the enterprise of Messrs. Jarvis, Derby, and Humphrey, large numbers of them were imported into our Northern States. These have improved our wool, until now it surpasses the English in fineness.
The fine-wool sheep thrive most in a dry climate and elevated country. We learn from Strabo, Columella, and Martial, that the fine wool of Italy was raised principally among the Apennines; and in Spain, Estremadura, a part of the ancient Baetica, is still famous for its wool. There the Spanish flocks winter, and thence in spring are sent to pasture in the mountains of Leon and Asturias. Other flocks are led in the same season from great distances to the heights of the Sierra Morena, where the vegetation is remarkably favorable to improvement of the wool.
In this country, the elevated lands of Texas and New Mexico are admirably adapted to the fine-wool sheep; and upon the head-waters of the Missouri and the Yellowstone is another district much resembling the Spanish sheep-walks, where the mountain-sheep and the antelope still predominate.
When Caesar invaded England he found there great numbers of flocks, and for many centuries wool was the great staple of English exports; but during the reign of Queen Elizabeth numerous artisans were driven from Brabant and Flanders by the Duke of Alva, and the manufacture of wool, which had enriched the Low Countries, was permanently established in England.
With the progress of agriculture, the turnip-culture enabled Great Britain to increase the number of her sheep; but they were raised more for the market than for their fleeces, which were rarely fine, and the demand for wool soon exceeded the supply. England then opened her ports to the free importation of wool from every region, and now annually manufactures two hundred millions of pounds, twice the amount manufactured in this country, of which two-thirds are drawn from distant lands, and her export of woollens for 1860 exceeded one hundred millions of dollars.
The same policy which has built up this vast manufacture, namely, the free importation of the raw material and of every article used in its manufacture, with a moderate duty on foreign cloths, will enable us to compete with England. Our farmers’ wives prefer the sheep-husbandry to the care of the dairy; much of our land furnishes cheap pasturage, and the prices of mutton are remunerative; but many of the low grades of wool come from abroad, and the mill-owner will not embark largely in the manufacture, unless he can purchase his materials as cheaply as his foreign competitor.
* * * * *
Cotton is mentioned by Herodotus five centuries before the Christian era. He alludes to the cotton-trees of India, and describes a cuirass sent from Egypt to the King of Sparta embellished with gold and with fleeces from trees. Theophrastus, the disciple of Aristotle, notices the growth of cotton both in India and Arabia, and observes that the cotton-plants of India have a leaf like the black mulberry, and are set on the plains in rows, resembling vines in the distance. On the Persian Gulf he noticed that they bore no fruit, but a capsule about the size of a quince, which, when ripe, expanded so as to set free the wool, which was woven into cloth of various kinds, both very cheap and of great value.
The cotton-plant was observed by the Greeks who accompanied Alexander in his march to India: and his officers have left a description of the cotton dress and turban which formed the costume of the natives at that remote period.
Cotton early found its way into Egypt, then the seat of arts and of commerce; for Pliny in his “Natural History” informs us that “in Upper Egypt, towards Arabia, there grows a shrub which some call _Gossypion_ and others _Xylon_. It is small, and bears a fruit resembling the filbert, within which is a downy wool that is spun into thread. There is nothing to be preferred to these stuffs for whiteness or softness. Beautiful garments are made from them for the priests of Egypt.”
The troops of Anthony wore cotton when he visited Cleopatra, and she was arrayed in vestments of fine muslin. It was soon after used for the sails of vessels, and the Romans employed it for awnings in the Forum and the Amphitheatres.
It was cultivated at an early period in the Levant, whence it was gradually introduced into Sicily, France, and England.
Arabian travellers who reached China in the ninth century did not observe the cotton-plant in that country, but found the natives clad in silk.
The cotton-plant, although indigenous in India, has also been found growing spontaneously in many parts of Africa. It was discovered by Columbus in Hispaniola, and among the presents sent by Cortes to Charles V. were cotton mantles, vests, and carpets of various figures, and in the conquest of Mexico the Indian allies wore armor of quilted cotton, impervious to arrows.
The plant of India resembles that of America in most particulars. It is there often placed in alternate rows with rice, and after the rice-harvest is over puts forth a beautiful yellow flower with a crimson eye in each petal; this is succeeded by a green pod filled with a white pulp, which as it ripens turns brown, and then separates into several divisions containing the cotton. A luxuriant field, says Forbes in his “Oriental Memoirs,” “exhibits at the same time the expanding blossom, the bursting capsule, and the snowy fleeces of pure cotton, and is one of the most beautiful objects in the agriculture of Hindostan.”
The manufacture of cotton in India, with very simple machinery, was early brought to high perfection. Travellers in the ninth century describe muslins in India which were of such fineness that they might be drawn through a ring of moderate size; and Tavernier speaks of turbans, composed of thirty-five ells of the cloth, which would weigh but four ounces. Muslin has been sold in India for five hundred rupees the piece, so fine, that, when laid upon the grass after the dew had fallen, it was no longer visible. The patience, the nice sense of touch, and the flexible fingers of the Hindoos have with the simplest means achieved results in this branch of manufacture which have not been surpassed by any people.
But this manufacture is now breathing its last; the cotton-gin, the spinning-frame, the mule with its countless spindles, and the power-loom are fearful competitors; and although British India still produces quite as much cotton as our Southern States, and while she exports at least eight hundred thousand bales annually to England and China, continues at the same time to make the larger part of her own clothing, flourishing cities, like Dacca and Delhi, once the seat of manufactures, are going to decay, and a large proportion of her people, willing to toil at six cents per day in occupations that have been transmitted for centuries in the same families, are either driven to the culture of the fields or compelled to spin and weave for a pittance the jute which is converted into gunny-cloth.
When India muslins and calicoes were first imported into England, they met with a formidable opposition. They had suddenly become fashionable, and threatened to supersede the long-established woollens; and the nation, in its wisdom, first prohibited the importation of these fabrics, and then subjected them to a duty of sixpence per yard. In France, Amiens, Rouen, and Paris protested against cotton as ruinous to the country. But it has surmounted all these obstacles, is firmly established in both nations, and now its manufacture gives support to one-seventh part of the population of Great Britain, employs there thirty-four millions of spindles, consumes annually two and a half million bales of the raw material, and sends abroad, in addition to thread and yarn, twenty-eight hundred million yards of fabrics, of the aggregate value of two hundred and thirty millions of dollars.
In 1856, Great Britain derived her supply of cotton from the following countries, namely:–
From the United States 71 per cent. ” the East Indies 19 ” “
” Brazil 5 ” “
” Egypt 4-1/2 ” “
” the West Indies 1/2 ” “
But while her supply from India in the twelve years from 1845 to 1857 increased nearly two hundred per cent, namely, from two hundred thousand to six hundred thousand bales, she has increased her exports of cotton fabrics to that country to such an extent, that, for every pound she imports, she returns a pound of thread and cloth enhanced at least fourfold in value, while she returns to the United States in cotton fabrics less than three per cent, of the cotton she receives from them. And since 1857 such improvements have been made in the cotton-mills of New England, that we now consume more than a million of bales annually, and our production and export are rapidly increasing.
Some curious alternations have attended the growth and manufacture of cotton. As machinery has improved and the cost of goods diminished, the price of cotton has advanced and a strong stimulus been given to its production.
New States have consequently been opened to its culture, and the alluvial lands of Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas have been devoted to the plant. Slaves have thus been attracted from the Middle States and diverted from the less profitable culture of wheat and tobacco to the cotton-fields. Half a century since, the Middle States contained two-thirds of the negroes of the Union; but under the census of 1860 two millions and a half of slaves are now found south of North Carolina, and but a million and a half north of the Cotton States. In the Cotton States the negroes nearly equal the white population; in the Border States the whites are at least four to one. In the Cotton States the slaves and the culture of cotton are increasing at the rate of at least five per cent.; in the Border States the slave population is either stationary or retrograde, and the future of those States is clearly indicated. Down to a recent period the march of the planter and his forces across the Cotton States has been like that of an invading army. Vast forests of heavy timber have been felled, land rapidly exhausted and abandoned, and new fields opened and soon deserted for a virgin soil.
But with the increased demand of the last seven years for cotton, and with the enhanced price of the slave, which rises at least one hundred dollars with each advance of a cent per pound on cotton, more permanent improvements have been made, railways have been opened, and at least fifty thousand tons of guano and cotton-seed have been annually applied to the exhausted cotton-fields of the Carolinas and Georgia. Under these appliances the crops of the United States have kept pace with the manufacture, and in 1859 rose to the amount of twenty-one hundred millions of pounds, thus replenishing the markets that had been recently exhausted, and actually exceeding the entire consumption for the same year of both Europe and America.
But the crops fluctuate from year to year, and a less favorable season for 1860, accompanied by an increase of at least ten per cent. in spindles, leaves the supply barely equal to the demand, while the diminished crop, and the cry of Secession at the South, with the introduction of an export-duty, have alarmed the spinners of England and led them to consider the effects of a deficiency and to seek new sources of supply.
With the progress of trade the price of the middling cotton of America for the last fifteen years has varied at Liverpool from fourpence to ninepence per pound, and now stands at seven and a halfpence by the last quotations. As the stock accumulates or the sale of goods is checked, the price naturally declines, and a check is given to production. As the stock declines or goods advance, an impetus is given to prices, the culture is extended, and cotton flows in from Egypt and India. When the cotton of Bombay commands more than fivepence per pound at Liverpool, it flows in a strong current from India to Manchester. Should the export-duty be levied in the Cotton States, it may well be presumed that the burden will fall principally upon the planter, and give an additional stimulus to the growth of India, and a new incentive to the British Government to start the culture in other colonies.
The gentlemen of the South sometimes imagine that Old England, as well as New England, is entirely dependent upon cotton, and that society there would be disintegrated, if the crop in the Cotton States should be withheld for a single year. But the Northern mills have usually six months’ supply; and Great Britain holds upon an average enough for three months in her ports, for two months at her mills, and as much more upon the ocean. The English spinner, too, can not only reduce his time one-fourth without stopping, but can reduce his consumption another fourth by raising his numbers and increasing the fineness of his cloth; and as he draws one-fourth of his supply from other countries, it is obvious that he might hold out for nearly two years without a bale from America.
Could the cotton-planter hold out any longer? Let it not be forgotten that the Embargo was voted to bring England to terms by withholding rice, cotton, wheat, and naval stores, but proved a signal failure. We reaped from it no harvests, and were put back by it at least six years in our national progress; while England enjoyed the carrying-trade of the world, which we had abandoned, and drew her supplies from Russia and India while our crops perished in our own warehouses.
The vast export of cotton goods from Great Britain to India has now liberated at least half a million bales of cotton for the supply of England in addition to what India previously furnished; and as the export of goods to India and China continues to increase, the surplus of cotton must rise with it. But India is able to treble her production. It is true that the staple of her cotton suffers from the dry summers, that her land is but half tilled by ploughs consisting of a simple beam of wood with two prongs and a single handle, that she has been destitute of roads and facilities for transportation, that her lands are held at oppressive rents, that American planters there have failed to make good cotton, and that the annual yield of her soil is as small as that of the exhausted fields of South Carolina. But still she produces at least four million bales of cotton, and great changes are now in progress: railways are pervading the country; canals are being dug for irrigating, and irrigation quadruples the crop, while it improves the staple; and the diversion of a few districts from the ordinary crops, with improved tillage, will increase the production to an indefinite extent.
The latest intelligence from India apprises us that in one large cotton district the American planters have at length succeeded, and American cotton is now growing there on one hundred and forty-six thousand acres.
IN DARWAR.
_In American Cotton. In Native Kupas. Total._ 1851 31,688 acres 223,314 acres 255,002 1860 146,320 ” 230,677 ” 377,003
In Africa, also, the export of cotton is on the increase; and Egypt is erecting new works to retain and direct the overflow of the Nile, which will augment her exports.
There is a belt around the earth’s surface of at least sixty degrees in width, adapted in great part to the culture of cotton. Great Britain now commands capital, while China and India overflow with labor. Let Great Britain divert a few millions of this capital and but half a million of coolies to any fertile area of five thousand square miles within this belt, and she can in a few years double her supply of cotton, and command the residue of her importation at reasonable prices.
Among these spots none is more promising than Central America, where the cotton-plant is perennial, and a single acre, as we are assured by Mr. Squier, yields semiannually a bale of superior cotton. But let us hope that the South may abandon her dream of a Southern Empire, and the chimera which now haunts her, that the Northerner is hostile to the Southerner, when in reality he has no such feeling, but merely recoils from institutions which he believes to be at variance with moral and material progress.
Hemp, or _Cannabis sativa_, from which we possibly derive the modern term canvas, was known to the ancients and used by them for rope and cordage and occasionally for cloth. It was found early in Thrace, in Caria, and upon the Rhone. Herodotus says that garments were made of it by the Thracians “so much like linen that none but an experienced person could tell whether they were made of hemp or of flax.”
Moschion, who flourished two centuries before the Christian era, states that the celebrated ship Syracusia built by Hiero II. was provided with rope made from the hemp of the Rhone. Although the plant is indigenous in Northern India, where it is cultivated for its narcotic qualities, it is adapted to a southern climate; and we may safely infer that it was not a native of either Italy, Greece, or Asia Minor, but was doubtless introduced into Caria by the active trade between the Euxine and Miletus. Cloth of hemp is still worn by boatmen upon the Danube; but although its fibre is nearly as delicate as that of flax and cotton, it is used principally for cordage, for which purpose it is imported from the interior of Russia into England and the United States. In 1858 the entire importation into Great Britain was forty-four thousand tons. A large amount is now raised in Missouri and Kentucky, whose soil is admirably adapted to the hemp-plant. Hemp grows freely in Bologna, Romagna, and Naples, and the Italians have a saying, that “it may be grown everywhere, but cannot be produced fit for use in heaven or on earth without manure.” The Italian hemp is aided by irrigation.
The plant is annual, and attains a height of three to ten feet, according to the soil and climate. Its stalk is hollow, filled with a soft pith, and surrounded by a cellular texture coated with a delicate membrane which runs parallel to the stalk and is covered by a thin cuticle. In Russia the seed is sown in June and gathered in September.
The Manila hemp (_Musa textilis_) does not appear to have been known to the ancients, and is now found in the Philippine Islands, the Indian Archipelago, and Japan, regions unexplored by the ancients. It is also found at the base of the Himalaya Mountains. It is a large herbaceous plant, which requires a warm climate, and is cut after a growth of eighteen months. The outer layers or fibres of the plant are called the _bandola_, which is used in the fabrication of cordage; the inner layers have a more delicate fibre called the _lupis_, which is woven into fine fabrics; while the intermediate layers, termed _tupoz_, are made into cloth of different degrees of fineness.
The filaments, after they are gathered, are separated by a knife, and rendered soft and pliable by beating them with a mallet; their ends are then gummed together, after which they are wound into balls, and the finer qualities are woven without going through the process of spinning. With the produce of this plant the natives pay their tribute, purchase the necessaries of life, and provide themselves with clothing.
The imports of this article into Great Britain in 1859 were very considerable, while the United States also imported a very large amount. It is used for cordage by the ships of both countries. In one respect it differs from wool, cotton, and hemp, the fibres of all of which are found by the microscope to consist of tubes, while the filaments of the _Musa textilis_, although often fine, are in no case hollow, and consequently are less flexible and divisible than other fibres.
Within the last twenty years, a new export from India, in the shape of Jute and its fabrics, has grown up from insignificance into commercial importance, and is now among the chief exports of the country. This article demands our particular attention, as it requires but four months for its production, furnishes a very large supply of textile material, is raised at one-fifth the expense of cotton, and has been sold in India as low as one cent per pound.
Jute is generally grown as an after-crop in India upon high ground, and flourishes best in a hot and rainy season. The seed is sown broadcast in April or May, when there is sufficient rain to moisten the ground. When the plant is a foot and a half high it is weeded. It rises on good soil to the height of twelve feet, and flowers between August and September. The stems are usually three-fourths of an inch in diameter. The leaves have long foot-stalks, the flowers are small and yellow, and the capsules short and globose, containing five cells for the seed. The fruit ripens in September and October. The average yield in fibre to the acre is from four hundred to seven hundred pounds. When the crop is ripe, the stems are cut close to the root, made up into bundles, and deposited for a week in some neighboring pond or stream.
The process of separating the fibre from the stem is thus described by Mr. Healy in the “Journal of Agriculture for India”;–
“The native operator, standing up to his middle in water, takes as many of the sticks in his hands as he can grasp, and removing a small portion of the bark from the end next the roots, and grasping them together, he with a little management strips off the whole from end to end, without breaking either stem or fibre. He then, swinging the bark around his head, dashes it repeatedly against the surface of the water, drawing it towards him to wash off the impurities.”
The filaments are then hung up to dry in the sun, often in lengths of twelve feet, and when dried the jute is ready for the market.
The color at first is a pure white, but gradually changes to yellow. The fibre, which is fine and delicate, is tubular, like that of flax and cotton, and is easily wrought; but its tenacity is not equal to that of other textile materials, although it is substituted in many fabrics for wool, flax, and cotton. A large portion of the crop, which already exceeds two hundred thousand tons, is exported to England as it comes from the field, and is there used in the manufacture both of wool and cotton to cheapen the fabric. The vigilant eye will often detect it in woollen manufactures, in shawls, and even in sail-cloths; but when spun with cotton or wool, it is very difficult to discover its presence.
A few years since, there was a great reduction in the price of plaid shawls from England, which took the dealers by surprise, as the cost was previously supposed to have reached the lowest point; but a close examination of the threads elicited the fact that the manufacturer had adroitly twisted in with his wool a liberal allowance of jute, costing but two or three cents a pound when wool cost thirty, and thus reduced the price of the fabric.
By the use of shoddy in the manufacture of woollens, and of jute in both cotton and woollen fabrics, the English artisan saves many millions of pounds both of wool and cotton. In those districts of India where British skill and commercial enterprise have checked the manufacture of muslin and calicoes, the Hindoos of all classes find in the culture and manufacture of jute employment for all, “from the palanquin-bearer and husbandman down to the Hindoo widow, saved by the interposition of England from the funeral pile, but condemned by custom for the residue of her days literally to sackcloth and ashes.” The fine and long-stapled jute is reserved for the export trade, for which it bears a comparatively high price; the residue is spun and woven by these classes as a domestic manufacture; it is made into gunny-cloth, which is circulated through the globe, forms the bagging for our corn, wheat, and cotton on their voyage to distant ports, and finally makes its last appearance as paper.
The long stems of the jute are highly esteemed in India; they resemble willow wands, are useful for basket-work and fencing, for trellis-work and the support of vines, and to make a charcoal which is valued for the manufacture of gunpowder.
The export of jute from India to England for 1859 was sixty thousand tons. The export of gunny-cloth from India to the United States in the same year amounted to several millions of pieces.
Why should not this valuable plant be introduced into America? It requires the same season and soil as our Indian corn, and would doubtless flourish in the rich alluvial lands of the West, and furnish a very cheap and useful domestic manufacture for our Western farmers.
The term Linen is doubtless derived from _Linum_, the classic and botanic name of flax. In Holy Writ, Moses called down the hail upon the growing flax of Lower Egypt, and Isaiah speaks of those “that work in fine flax.” According to Herodotus, the ancient Egyptians wore linen. Plutarch informs us that the priests of Isis wore linen on account of its purity, and mentions a tradition that flax was used for clothing “because the color of its blossom resembles the ethereal blue which surrounds the world”; and he adds, that the priests of Isis were buried in their sacred vestments. An eminent cotton-spinner, who subjected four hundred specimens of mummy-cloth to the microscope, has ascertained that they were all linen; and even now, when aspiring cotton has contested its superiority, and claimed to be more healthful and more beneficial to the human frame, the choicest drapery of our tables and couches, and many of our most costly and elegant articles of dress, are fabricated from flax.
Flax is sown in the spring and harvested in the summer, and requires but three months for its growth. While cotton grows in hot climates only, flax grows both under the tropics and in temperate climates, and as far north as Russia, Ireland, and Canada; and while at the South it runs mostly to seed, the best varieties are produced in Normandy, Belgium, and Poland.
In another particular flax has the advantage over cotton. While the latter, under the ordinary course of cultivation in South Carolina, yields but one bale to four acres, and in virgin soil rarely more than one bale to two acres, flax yields in good soil from five to eight hundred pounds of fibre to the acre, which may be converted into flax-cotton by modern machinery; and as the product has but three per cent. waste, while cotton loses eleven per cent. in its manufacture, the flax-cotton which is produced from a single acre is the equivalent of one to two bales of cotton.
With these important advantages, namely, its adaptation to a northern climate where the white man can labor, and a capacity for yielding so large an amount of fibre, flax holds a high place in the list of textile materials.
Flax can be raised with very moderate expense up to the time of harvest. If the soil is free from weeds, it requires little more preparation, care, or expense for its culture than wheat or barley. But from this point onward a large expenditure of labor is requisite, which greatly enhances the cost, carrying it up as high as ten to twenty cents per pound, according to the degree of fineness; for the filaments must be separated from the stem by immersion in water, must be kept in parallel lines, and prepared for the spindle by skilful and long-continued labor.
To insure the best quality, it must be pulled and bound in bundles before it is entirely ripe, thus impairing the value of the seed, while the edible and nutritious portion of the stalk is lost or injured in the water.
For many years it was spun on the little wheel, but of late years improved machinery has been applied at Belfast, Leeds, Dundee, and other cities of Great Britain; yet nearly a third of the value is lost in the broken filaments, which are reduced to tow in its preparation for the spindle. With a fibre at least as fine and delicate as that of cotton, its full value to the world will not be demonstrated until it is effectually cottonized.
In its present state, however, it has come into very extensive use. More than eighty thousand tons were, in 1859, imported into Great Britain, and many acres are there devoted to its culture. The consumption in that country is estimated to exceed one hundred and sixty thousand tons, a quantity equivalent to eight hundred thousand bales of cotton. In addition to this, ten millions of bushels of flax-seed are annually crushed in Great Britain, a large portion of which is drawn from India.
The culture of flax was introduced into this country early in the last century by the Scotch, who crossed over to Ireland under Elizabeth and Cromwell, and soon after the siege of Derry transferred their arts and their industry to this country. Several colonies of these were planted in Pennsylvania and Tennessee, and a large colony was established at Natfield, New Hampshire, upon a tract twelve miles square, one of the best sections of the State, situate in the area between Manchester, Lowell, Lawrence, and Exeter. Here every farmer cultivated his field of barley and flax, here every woman had her little wheel, and the article formed the currency of the place;–notes were given payable in spinning-wheels. Girls were seen beetling the linen on the grass; and when the harvest over, the men mounted their horses, and with well-filled saddle-bags threaded the by-roads of the forest to find a market in Boston, Lynn, Salem, or Newburyport. Fortunes were thus accumulated and a flourishing academy and two Presbyterian societies are now sustained by funds thus acquired by the Pinkerton family. But as the wages of girls gradually rose from two shillings to two dollars per week with the invention of the cotton-gin, the power-loom, and the spinning-jenny, the culture of flax was gradually abandoned, the seat of manufactures removed from the hills to the waterfalls, and the flax-fields converted into market-gardens or milk-farms. The town of Derry, once the great seat of New-England manufactures, is now principally distinguished for the Stark, Rogers, and Reed it gave to the French War and the Revolution, for the Bells, Dinsmores, Wilsons, and Pattersons it has given to the halls of legislation, and the McKeens, McGregors, Morisons, and Nesmiths it has furnished to commerce or the Church.
At the present rates of labor, the culture of flax cannot be revived in this region until the mode of curing and dressing it is cheapened; and there is reason to hope that this revolution is at hand.
At the present moment flax is raised both in India and Ohio for the seed alone. An acre of ripened flax yields from ten to twenty bushels of seed, and each bushel affords nearly or quite two gallons of linseed-oil. The well-ripened seed is most prolific in oil.
It has been supposed by some that flax exhausts the soil. It is undoubtedly true that it does best under a rotation of crops, and that the ingredients it withdraws from the soil should be restored to preserve its fertility. But the reduction of the plant to ashes shows that its chemical components can be restored at a cost of three dollars per acre, while the properties withdrawn by the seed can be easily supplied by returning in other fertilizers the equivalent for half a ton of flax-seed. If the oil-cake be consumed upon the farm, little more than the above and its product in manure will be required.
The ashes of the flax-plant have been analyzed. Dr. Royle, of England, a distinguished writer upon fibrous plants, assures us that the following compound will supply to one acre all that the plant requires, and leave the land as fertile as before the flax was gathered:–
_lbs. s. d._
Muriate of Potash 30 cost 2 6 Common Salt 28 ” 0 3
Burned Plaster of Paris 34 ” 0 6 Bone-Dust 54 ” 3 3
Epsom Salts 56 ” 4 0
10 6
It has been ascertained by the microscope that wool, cotton, hemp, jute, and flax are composed of minute fibres, each of which forms a hollow tube, and there is a close resemblance between the tubes of each,–the tube of the cotton, however, collapsing as it ripens. These tubes in the jute and flax are closely cemented together, and the term _Fibrilia_ has been applied to fibres of the plant when reduced to a short staple like cotton. The process for effecting this result is very accurately described in a work just published, entitled “Fibrilia.” The patentees of this invention claim that their process, in the space of twenty-four hours, converts the flax and tow, as they come from the threshing-mill, into an article which may be spun and woven by the same machinery as cotton. The article produced and lately exhibited at public meetings resembles cotton in its appearance and qualities, with the advantage that it wastes less in the manufacture, has more lustre, and receives a superior color. The patentees and their friends further claim that this cotton can be raised in all temperate latitudes, at the rate of four to eight hundred pounds per acre, and profess within the past year to have manufactured twelve thousand pounds.
These statements have been confidently made at public meetings in the State House of Massachusetts, and it is understood that a mill containing one hundred looms, half of which are now in operation, has been erected at Roxbury, under the direction of gentlemen who are familiar with the manufacture. Should the same results be obtained on a large scale which have attended the manufacture of the first few bales, the first step in a great revolution will be effected.
By the process of Mr. S.M. Allen of Boston, the great outlay of labor which has usually attended the culture and preparation of flax is avoided. When the plant has attained its full height of twenty to thirty inches, and its seed is ripened, it is harvested like grass with a mowing-machine, dried like hay or oats in the field, and then carried to the threshing-mill. After the seed is separated, the stalk is transferred to a patent brake, moved by two or four horses, and costing from three to four hundred dollars. This machine is composed of several sets of fluted iron rollers, between which the stalk passes from one set to another, the rollers gradually diminishing in size, but increasing in rapidity of motion, by means of which the woody texture of the plant is effectually broken and separated. The filaments are then carried through a coarse card or picker. The shives are thus separated, and two tons of stalks reduced to half a ton of linten, which may be either taken at once to the retort or baled for shipment. When the flax is thus reduced by the farmer to linten, the article is reputed to be worth to the manufacturer four cents a pound, or at least twenty dollars for the product of an acre yielding a single ton of flax-straw.
According to this statement the farmer would realize from his crop at least as follows:–
Estimated value of seed, 14 bushels, at $1.25 $17.50
Estimated value of 500 lbs. of linten, at 4 cts. 20.00
Estimated value of 3/4 of a ton of shives from unrotted stems, valuable for
cattle, at $8.00 per ton 6.00
Produce of an acre $43.50
And this produce would be realized with little more labor than a crop of oats or wheat, returning less than twenty-five dollars to the acre. Unless the soil should be foul, no weeding would be required, while the breaking would cost little more than a second threshing, and a second crop of turnips can be taken from the same soil.
From the patent brake and the picker the linten is carried to a retort, which may hold from five hundred to three thousand pounds of fibre,–the capacity of one hundred cubic feet being required for each thousand pounds; and the retort, which may be made from boiler-plates, costs from three hundred to fifteen hundred dollars. Here the linten is put into a hot bath of air forced through heated water, and thus charged with moisture, which softens the filaments and diminishes the cohesion of the fibres. After this air-bath, pure water of the temperature of one hundred and forty to one hundred and sixty degrees is admitted into the retort, and the linten is immersed in it for five or six hours.
After this steeping process is completed, the water is let off from below, and pure water admitted from above under pressure, until the color begins to change; the fibre is then steeped for three or four hours in a weak solution of soda-ash; the alkali is washed out by the admission of pure water alternating with steam, and, if necessary to complete the bleaching, a weak solution of chlorine is applied. All this may be effected without removing the linten from the retort. The product is then dried as in ordinary drying-rooms.
When dried, it is carried again through a set of cards, and a piece of machinery termed a railway-head, with positive draught, which can be set so as to give any length of staple, and to present the flax-cotton thus produced in any form required for spinning, either separately or mixed with cotton or wool, and thus adapted to the machinery used in the manufacture of either of these articles. The cost of this process, from the brake to the final production of the cotton, is set by the patentee, after leaving him a fair profit, at three cents per pound of cotton; and if we add this to the cost of the linten, and allow for freight and storage, the entire cost of the fibrilia is but eight cents per pound, or two-thirds of the present price of middling cotton.
The idea of modifying the filaments of flax and hemp so as to convert them into cotton is by no means a new one. As long ago as 1747 it was proposed to convert flax into cotton by boiling it in a solution of caustic potash, and subsequently washing it with soap; and in 1775 Lady Moira, aided by T.B. Bailey, actually converted some refuse flax into cotton by boiling it in alkali. The result was, that the fibres seemed to be set at liberty from each other; after which it was carded on cotton cards, spun, and woven as cotton.
The Chevalier Claussen, as recently as 1850, claimed to have discovered the process, and actually took out a patent; but his invention, which consisted in boiling the cut and crushed stems of the flax in a solution of caustic soda, turned out a failure,–the cutting, crushing, and boiling processes proving alike defective.
New discoveries are the result of repeated trials; perseverance usually prevails; and if States are to secede at pleasure and withhold their cotton, and no other good uses can be found for flax or hemp, why should not their fibres secede also,–be set at liberty and resolve themselves into a cotton state?
We might pass from the fibrous plants, and the metamorphosis of flax into cotton, to the _Pinna_, whose fibres grow in the sea on the coast of Italy, and anchor the huge shell-fish to the rock or the sand. These fibres are brought up by divers, and woven into beautiful fabrics. We might repeat the tale of the crab which lives with this shell-fish, and apprises his blind housekeeper of the approach of danger,–a tale confirmed by ancient and modern naturalists,–for there are strange doings in the sea as well as upon the land. We might also dilate upon China grass, which is manufactured in the East into delicate fabrics. But our limits compel us to defer these topics.
NAT TURNER’S INSURRECTION.
During the year 1831, up to the twenty-third of August, the Virginia newspapers were absorbed in the momentous problems which then occupied the minds of intelligent American citizens:–What General Jackson should do with the scolds, and what with the disreputables,–Should South Carolina be allowed to nullify? and would the wives of Cabinet Ministers call on Mrs. Eaton? It is an unfailing opiate, to turn over the drowsy files of the “Richmond Enquirer”, until the moment when those dry and dusty pages are suddenly kindled into flame by the torch of Nat Turner. Then the terror flares on increasing, until the remotest Southern States are found shuddering at nightly rumors of insurrection,–until far-off European colonies, Antigua, Martinique, Caraccas, Tortola, recognize by some secret sympathy the same epidemic alarms,–until the very boldest words of freedom are reported as uttered in the Virginia House of Delegates with unclosed doors,–until an obscure young man named Garrison is indicted at Common Law in North Carolina, and has a price set upon his head by the Legislature of Georgia. The insurrection revived in one agonizing reminiscence all the distresses of Gabriel’s Revolt, thirty years before; and its memory endures still fresh, now that thirty added years have brought the more formidable presence of General Butler. It is by no means impossible that the very children or even confederates of Nat Turner may be included at this moment among the contraband articles of Fort Monroe.
Near the southeastern border of Virginia, in Southampton County, there is a neighborhood known as “The Cross Keys”. It lies fifteen miles from Jerusalem, the county-town or “court-house”, seventy miles from Norfolk, and about as far from Richmond. It is some ten or fifteen miles from Murfreesboro in North Carolina, and about twenty-five from the Great Dismal Swamp. Up to Sunday, the twenty-first of August, 1831, there was nothing to distinguish it from any other rural, lethargic, slipshod Virginia neighborhood, with the due allotment of mansion-houses and log-huts, tobacco-fields and “old-fields”, horses, dogs, negroes, “poor white folks”, so called, and other white folks, poor without being called so. One of these last was Joseph Travis, who had recently married the widow of one Putnam Moore, and had unfortunately wedded to himself her negroes also.
In the woods on the plantation of Joseph Travis, upon the Sunday just named, six slaves met at noon for what is called in the Northern States a picnic and in the Southern a barbecue. The bill of fare was to be simple: one brought a pig, and another some brandy, giving to the meeting an aspect so cheaply convivial that no one would have imagined it to be the final consummation of a conspiracy which had been for six months in preparation. In this plot four of the men had been already initiated,–Henry, Hark or Hercules, Nelson, and Sam. Two others were novices, Will and Jack by name. The party had remained together from twelve to three o’clock, when a seventh man joined them,–a short, stout, powerfully built person, of dark mulatto complexion and strongly-marked African features, but with a face full of expression and resolution. This was Nat Turner.
He was at this time nearly thirty-one years old, having been born on the second of October, 1800. He had belonged originally to Benjamin Turner,–whence his last name, slaves having usually no patronymic,–had then been transferred to Putnam Moore, and then to his present owner. He had, by his own account, felt himself singled out from childhood for some great work; and he had some peculiar marks on his person, which, joined to his great mental precocity, were enough to occasion, among his youthful companions, a superstitious faith in his gifts and destiny. He had great mechanical ingenuity also, experimentalized very early in making paper, gunpowder, pottery, and in other arts which in later life he was found thoroughly to understand. His moral faculties were very strong, so that white witnesses admitted that he had never been known to swear an oath, to drink a drop of spirits, or to commit a theft. And in general, so marked were his early peculiarities, that people said “he had too much sense to be raised, and if he was, he would never be of any use as a slave.” This impression of personal destiny grew with his growth;–he fasted, prayed, preached, read the Bible, heard voices when he walked behind his plough, and communicated his revelations to the awe-struck slaves. They told him in return, that, “if they had his sense, they would not serve any master in the world.”
The biographies of slaves can hardly be individualized; they belong to the class. We know bare facts; it is only the general experience of human beings in like condition which can clothe them with life. The outlines are certain, the details are inferential. Thus, for instance, we know that Nat Turner’s young wife was a slave; we know that she belonged to a different master from himself; we know little more than this, but this is much. For this is equivalent to saying that by day or by night that husband had no more power to protect her than the man who lies bound upon a plundered vessel’s deck has power to protect his wife on board the pirate-schooner disappearing in the horizon; she may be reverenced, she may be outraged; it is in the powerlessness that the agony lies. There is, indeed, one thing more which we do know of this young woman: the Virginia newspapers state that she was tortured under the lash, after her husband’s execution, to make her produce his papers: this is all.
What his private experiences and special privileges or wrongs may have been, it is therefore now impossible to say. Travis was declared to be “more humane and fatherly to his slaves than any man in the county”; but it is astonishing how often this phenomenon occurs in the contemporary annals of slave insurrections. The chairman of the county court also stated, in pronouncing sentence, that Nat Turner had spoken of his master as “only too indulgent”; but this, for some reason, does not appear in his printed Confession, which only says, “He was a kind master, and placed the greatest confidence in me.” It is very possible that it may have been so, but the printed accounts of Nat Turner’s person look suspicious: he is described in Governor Floyd’s proclamation as having a scar on one of his temples, also one on the back of his neck, and a large knot on one of the bones of his right arm, produced by a blow; and although these were explained away in Virginia newspapers as being produced by fights with his companions, yet such affrays are entirely foreign to the admitted habits of the man. It must, therefore, remain an open question, whether the scars and the knot were produced by black hands or by white.
Whatever Nat Turner’s experiences of slavery might have been, it is certain that his plans were not suddenly adopted, but that he had brooded over them for years. To this day there are traditions among the Virginia slaves of the keen devices of “Prophet Nat”. If he was caught with lime and lamp-black in hand, conning over a half-finished county-map on the barn-door, he was always “planning what to do, if he were blind”, or “studying how to get to Mr. Francis’s house.” When he had called a meeting of slaves, and some poor whites came eavesdropping, the poor whites at once became the subjects for discussion; he incidentally mentioned that the masters had been heard threatening to drive them away; one slave had been ordered to shoot Mr. Jones’s pigs, another to tear down Mr. Johnson’s fences. The poor whites, Johnson and Jones, ran home to see to their homesteads, and were better friends than ever to Prophet Nat.
He never was a Baptist preacher, though such vocation has often been attributed to him. The impression arose from his having immersed himself, during one of his periods of special enthusiasm, together with a poor white man named Brantley. “About this time”, he says in his Confession, “I told these things to a white man, on whom it had a wonderful effect, and he ceased from his wickedness, and was attacked immediately with a cutaneous eruption, and the blood oozed from the pores of his skin, and after praying and fasting nine days he was healed. And the Spirit appeared to me again, and said, as the Saviour had been baptized, so should we be also; and when the white people would not let us be baptized by the Church, we went down into the water together, in the sight of many who reviled us, and were baptized by the Spirit. After this I rejoiced greatly and gave thanks to God.”
The religious hallucinations narrated in his Confession seem to have been as genuine as the average of such things, and are very well expressed. It reads quite like Jacob Behmen. He saw white spirits and black spirits contending in the skies, the sun was darkened, the thunder rolled. “And the Holy Ghost was with me, and said, ‘Behold me as I stand in the heavens!’ And I looked and saw the forms of men in different attitudes. And there were lights in the sky, to which the children of darkness gave other names than what they really were; for they were the lights of the Saviour’s hands, stretched forth from east to west, even as they were extended on the cross on Calvary, for the redemption of sinners.” He saw drops of blood on the corn: this was Christ’s blood, shed for man. He saw on the leaves in the woods letters and numbers and figures of men,–the same symbols which he had seen in the skies. On May 12, 1828, the Holy Spirit appeared to him and proclaimed that the yoke of Jesus must fall on him, and he must fight against the Serpent when the sign appeared. Then came an eclipse of the sun in February, 1831: this was the sign; then he must arise and prepare himself, and slay his enemies with their own weapons; then also the seal was removed from his lips, and then he confided his plans to four associates.
When he came, therefore, to the barbecue on the appointed Sunday, and found, not these four only, but two others, his first question to the intruders was, How they came thither. To this Will answered manfully, that his life was worth no more than the others, and “his liberty was as dear to him.” This admitted him to confidence, and as Jack was known to be entirely under Hark’s influence, the strangers were no bar to their discussion. Eleven hours they remained there, in anxious consultation: one can imagine those terrible dusky faces, beneath the funereal woods, and amid the flickering of pine-knot torches, preparing that stern revenge whose shuddering echoes should ring through the land so long. Two things were at last decided: to begin their work that night, and to begin it with a massacre so swift and irresistible as to create in a few days more terror than many battles, and so spare the need of future bloodshed. “It was agreed that we should commence at home on that night, and, until we had armed and equipped ourselves and gained sufficient force, neither age nor sex was to be spared: which was invariably adhered to.”
John Brown invaded Virginia with nineteen men, and with the avowed resolution to take no life but in self-defence. Nat Turner attacked Virginia from within, with six men, and with the determination to spare no life until his power was established. John Brown intended to pass rapidly through Virginia, and then retreat to the mountains. Nat Turner intended to “conquer Southampton County as the white men did in the Revolution, and then retreat, if necessary, to the Dismal Swamp.” Each plan was deliberately matured; each was in its way practicable; but each was defeated by a single false step, as will soon appear.
We must pass over the details of horror, as they occurred during the next twenty-four hours. Swift and stealthy as Indians, the black men passed from house to house,–not pausing, not hesitating, as their terrible work went on. In one thing they were humaner than Indians or than white men fighting against Indians,–there was no gratuitous outrage beyond the death-blow itself, no insult, no mutilation; but in every house they entered, that blow fell on man, woman, and child,–nothing that had a white skin was spared. From every house they took arms and ammunition, and from a few, money; on every plantation they found recruits: those dusky slaves, so obsequious to their master the day before, so prompt to sing and dance before his Northern visitors, were all swift to transform themselves into fiends of retribution now; show them sword or musket and they grasped it, though it were an heirloom from Washington himself. The troop increased from house to house,–first to fifteen, then to forty, then to sixty. Some were armed with muskets, some with axes, some with scythes; some came on their masters’ horses. As the numbers increased, they could be divided, and the awful work was carried on more rapidly still. The plan then was for an advanced guard of horsemen to approach each house at a gallop, and surround it till the others came up. Meanwhile what agonies of terror must have taken place within, shared alike by innocent and by guilty! what memories of wrongs inflicted on those dusky creatures, by some,–what innocent participation, by others, in the penance! The outbreak lasted for but forty-eight hours; but during that period fifty-five whites were slain, without the loss of a single slave.
One fear was needless, which to many a husband and father must have intensified the last struggle. These negroes had been systematically brutalized from childhood; they had been allowed no legalized or permanent marriage; they had beheld around them an habitual licentiousness, such as can scarcely exist except in a Slave State; some of them had seen their wives and sisters habitually polluted by the husbands and the brothers of these fair white women who were now absolutely in their power. Yet I have looked through the Virginia newspapers of that time in vain for one charge of an indecent outrage on a woman against these triumphant and terrible slaves. Wherever they went, there went death, and that was all. Compare this with ordinary wars; compare it with the annals of the French Revolution. No one, perhaps, has yet painted the wrongs of the French populace so terribly as Dickens in his “Tale of Two Cities”; yet what man, conversant with slave-biographies, can read that narrative without feeling it weak beside the provocations to which fugitive slaves testify? It is something for human nature that these desperate insurgents revenged such wrongs by death alone. Even that fearful penalty was to be inflicted only till the object was won. It was admitted in the “Richmond Enquirer” of the time, that “indiscriminate massacre was not their intention, after they obtained foothold, and was resorted to in the first instance to strike terror and alarm. Women and children would afterwards have been spared, and men also who ceased to resist.”
It is reported by some of the contemporary newspapers, that a portion of this abstinence was the result of deliberate consultation among the insurrectionists; that some of them were resolved on taking the white women for wives, but were overruled by Nat Turner. If so, he is the only American slave-leader of whom we know certainly that he rose above the ordinary level of slave vengeance, and Mrs. Stowe’s picture of Dred’s purposes is then precisely typical of his. “Whom the Lord saith unto us, ‘Smite,’ them will we smite. We will not torment them with the scourge and fire, nor defile their women as they have done with ours. But we will slay them utterly, and consume them from off the face of the earth.”
When the number of adherents had increased to fifty or sixty, Nat Turner judged it time to strike at the county-seat, Jerusalem. Thither a few white fugitives had already fled, and couriers might thence be despatched for aid to Richmond and Petersburg, unless promptly intercepted. Besides, he could there find arms, ammunition, and money; though they had already obtained, it is dubiously reported, from eight hundred to one thousand dollars. On the way it was necessary to pass the plantation of Mr. Parker, three miles from Jerusalem. Some of the men wished to stop here and enlist some of their friends. Nat Turner objected, as the delay might prove dangerous; he yielded at last, and it proved fatal.
He remained at the gate with six or eight men; thirty or forty went to the house, half a mile distant. They remained too long, and he went alone to hasten them. During his absence a party of eighteen white men came up suddenly, dispersing the small guard left at the gate; and when the main body of slaves emerged from the house, they encountered, for the first time, their armed masters. The blacks halted, the whites advanced cautiously within a hundred yards and fired a volley; on its being returned, they broke into disorder, and hurriedly retreated, leaving some wounded on the ground. The retreating whites were pursued, and were saved only by falling in with another band of fresh men from Jerusalem, with whose aid they turned upon the slaves, who in their turn fell into confusion. Turner, Hark, and about twenty men on horseback retreated in some order; the rest were scattered. The leader still planned to reach Jerusalem by a private way, thus evading pursuit; but at last decided to stop for the night, in the hope of enlisting additional recruits.
During the night the number increased again to forty, and they encamped on Major Ridley’s plantation. An alarm took place during the darkness,–whether real or imaginary does not appear,–and the men became scattered again. Proceeding to make fresh enlistments with the daylight, they were resisted at Dr. Blunt’s house, where his slaves, under his orders, fired upon them, and this, with a later attack from a party of white men near Captain Harris’s, so broke up the whole force that they never reunited. The few who remained together agreed to separate for a few hours to see if anything could be done to revive the insurrection, and meet again that evening at their original rendezvous. But they never reached it.
Sadly came Nat Turner at nightfall into those gloomy woods where forty-eight hours before he had revealed the details of his terrible plot to his companions. At the outset all his plans had succeeded; everything was as he predicted: the slaves had come readily at his call, the masters had proved perfectly defenceless. Had he not been persuaded to pause at Parker’s plantation, he would have been master before now of the arms and ammunition at Jerusalem; and with these to aid, and the Dismal Swamp for a refuge, he might have sustained himself indefinitely against his pursuers.
Now the blood was shed, the risk was incurred, his friends were killed or captured, and all for what? Lasting memories of terror, to be sure, for his oppressors; but on the other hand, hopeless failure for the insurrection, and certain death for him. What a watch he must have kept that night! To that excited imagination, which had always seen spirits in the sky and blood-drops on the corn and hieroglyphic marks on the dry leaves, how full the lonely forest must have been of signs and solemn warnings! Alone with the fox’s bark, the rabbit’s rustle, and the screech-owl’s scream, the self-appointed prophet brooded over his despair. Once creeping to the edge of the wood, he saw men stealthily approach on horseback. He fancied them some of his companions; but before he dared to whisper their ominous names, “Hark” or “Dred,”–for the latter was the name, since famous, of one of his more recent recruits,–he saw them to be white men, and shrank back stealthily beneath his covert.
There he waited two weary days and two melancholy nights,–long enough to satisfy himself that no one would rejoin him, and that the insurrection had hopelessly failed. The determined, desperate spirits who had shared his plans were scattered forever, and longer delay would be destruction for him also. He found a spot which he judged safe, dug a hole under a pile of fence-rails in a field, and lay there for six weeks, only leaving it for a few moments at midnight to obtain water from a neighboring spring. Food he had previously provided, without discovery, from a house near by.
Meanwhile an unbounded variety of rumors went flying through the State. The express which first reached the Governor announced that the militia were retreating before the slaves. An express to Petersburg further fixed the number of militia at three hundred, and of blacks at eight hundred, and invented a convenient shower of rain to explain the dampened ardor of the whites. Later reports described the slaves as making three desperate attempts to cross the bridge over the Nottoway between Cross Keys and Jerusalem, and stated that the leader had been shot in the attempt. Other accounts put the number of negroes at three hundred, all well mounted and armed, with two or three white men as leaders. Their intention was supposed to be to reach the Dismal Swamp, and they must be hemmed in from that side.
Indeed, the most formidable weapon in the hands of slave-insurgents is always this blind panic they create, and the wild exaggerations which follow. The worst being possible, every one takes the worst for granted. Undoubtedly a dozen armed men could have stifled this insurrection, even after it had commenced operations; but it is the fatal weakness of a slaveholding community, that it can never furnish men promptly for such a purpose, “My first intention was,” says one of the most intelligent newspaper narrators of the affair, “to have attacked them with thirty or forty men; but those who had families here were strongly opposed to it.”
As usual, each man was pinioned to his own hearth-stone. As usual, aid had to be summoned from a distance, and, as usual, the United States troops were the chief reliance. Colonel House, commanding at Fort Monroe, sent at once three companies of artillery under Lieutenant-Colonel Worth, and embarked them on board the steamer Hampton for Suffolk. These were joined by detachments from the United States ships Warren and Natchez, the whole amounting to nearly eight hundred men. Two volunteer companies went from Richmond, four from Petersburg, one from Norfolk, one from Portsmouth, and several from North Carolina. The militia of Norfolk, Nansemond, and Princess Anne Counties, and the United States troops at Old Point Comfort, were ordered to scour the Dismal Swamp, where it was believed that two or three thousand fugitives were preparing to join the insurgents. It was even proposed to send two companies from New York and one from New London to the same point.
When these various forces reached Southampton County, they found all labor paralyzed and whole plantations abandoned. A letter from Jerusalem, dated August 24th, says, “The oldest inhabitant of our county has never experienced such a distressing time as we have had since Sunday night last….. Every house, room, and corner in this place is full of women and children, driven from home, who had to take the woods until they could get to this place.” “For many miles around their track,” says another, “the county is deserted by women and children.” Still another writes, “Jerusalem is full of women, most of them from the other side of the river,–about two hundred at Vix’s.” Then follow descriptions of the sufferings of these persons, many of whom had lain night after night in the woods. But the immediate danger was at an end, the short-lived insurrection was finished, and now the work of vengeance was to begin. In the frank phrase of a North Carolina correspondent,–“The massacre of the whites was over, and the white people had commenced the destruction of the negroes, which was continued after our men got there, from time to time, as they could fall in with them, all day yesterday.” A postscript adds, that “passengers by the Fayetteville stage say, that, by the latest accounts, one hundred and twenty negroes had been killed,”–this being little more than one day’s work.
These murders were defended as Nat Turner defended his: a fearful blow must be struck. In shuddering at the horrors of the insurrection, we have forgotten the far greater horrors of its suppression.
The newspapers of the day contain many indignant protests against the cruelties which took place. “It is with pain,” says a correspondent of the “National Intelligencer,” September 7, 1831, “that we speak of another feature of the Southampton Rebellion; for we have been most unwilling to have our sympathies for the sufferers diminished or affected by their misconduct. We allude to the slaughter of many blacks without trial and under circumstances of great barbarity….. We met with an individual of intelligence who told us that he himself had killed between ten and fifteen….. We [the Richmond troop] witnessed with surprise the sanguinary temper of the population, who evinced a strong disposition to inflict immediate death on every prisoner.”
There is a remarkable official document from General Eppes, the officer in command, to be found in the “Richmond Enquirer” for September 6, 1831. It is an indignant denunciation of precisely these outrages; and though he refuses to give details, he supplies their place by epithets: “revolting,”–“inhuman and not to be justified,”–“acts of barbarity and cruelty,”–“acts of atrocity,”–“this course of proceeding dignifies the rebel and the assassin with the sanctity of martyrdom.” And he ends by threatening martial law upon all future transgressors. Such general orders are not issued except in rather extreme cases. And in the parallel columns of the newspaper the innocent editor prints equally indignant descriptions of Russian atrocities in Lithuania, where the Poles were engaged in active insurrection, amid profuse sympathy from Virginia.
The truth is, it was a Reign of Terror. Volunteer patrols rode in all directions, visiting plantations. “It was with the greatest difficulty,” said General Brodnax before the House of Delegates, “and at the hazard of personal popularity and esteem, that the coolest and most judicious among us could exert an influence sufficient to restrain an indiscriminate slaughter of the blacks who were suspected.” A letter from the Rev. G.W. Powell declares, “There are thousands of troops searching in every direction, and many negroes are killed every day: the exact number will never be ascertained.” Petition after petition was subsequently presented to the legislature, asking compensation for slaves thus assassinated without trial.
Men were tortured to death, burned, maimed, and subjected to nameless atrocities. The overseers were called on to point out any slaves whom they distrusted, and if any tried to escape, they were shot down. Nay, worse than this. “A party of horsemen started from Richmond with the intention of killing every colored person they saw in Southampton County. They stopped opposite the cabin of a free colored man, who was hoeing in his little field. They called out, ‘Is this Southampton County?’ He replied, ‘Yes, Sir, you have just crossed the line, by yonder tree.’ They shot him dead and rode on.” This is from the narrative of the editor of the “Richmond Whig,” who was then on duty in the militia, and protested manfully against these outrages. “Some of these scenes,” he adds, “are hardly inferior in barbarity to the atrocities of the insurgents.”
These were the masters’ stones. If even these conceded so much, it would be interesting to hear what the slaves had to report. I am indebted to my honored friend, Lydia Maria Child, for some vivid recollections of this terrible period, as noted down from the lips of an old colored woman, once well known in New York, Charity Bower. “At the time of the old Prophet Nat,” she said, “the colored folks was afraid to pray loud; for the whites threatened to punish ’em dreadfully, if the least noise was heard. The patrols was low drunken whites, and in Nat’s time, if they heard any of the colored folks praying or singing a hymn, they would fall upon ’em and abuse ’em, and sometimes kill ’em, afore master or missis could get to ’em. The brightest and best was killed in Nat’s time. The whites always suspect such ones. They killed a great many at a place called Duplon. They killed Antonio, a slave of Mr. J. Stanley, whom they shot; then they pointed their guns at him, and told him to confess about the insurrection. He told ’em he didn’t know anything about any insurrection. They shot several balls through him, quartered him, and put his head on a pole at the fork of the road leading to the court.” (This is no exaggeration, if the Virginia newspapers may be taken as evidence.) “It was there but a short time. He had no trial. They never do. In Nat’s time, the patrols would tie up the free colored people, flog ’em, and try to make ’em lie against one another, and often killed them before anybody could interfere. Mr. James Cole, High Sheriff, said, if any of the patrols came on his plantation, he would lose his life in defence of his people. One day he heard a patroller boasting how many niggers he had killed. Mr. Cole said, ‘If you don’t pack up, as quick as God Almighty will let you, and get out of this town, and never be seen in it again, I’ll put you where dogs won’t bark at you.’ He went off, and wasn’t seen in them parts again.”
These outrages were not limited to the colored population; but other instances occurred which strikingly remind one of more recent times. An Englishman, named Robinson, was engaged in selling books at Petersburg. An alarm being given, one night, that five hundred blacks were marching towards the town, he stood guard, with others, on the bridge. After the panic had a little subsided, he happened to remark, that “the blacks, as men, were entitled to their freedom, and ought to be emancipated.” This led to great excitement, and he was warned to leave town. He took passage in the stage, but the stage was intercepted. He then fled to a friend’s house; the house was broken open, and he was dragged forth. The civil authorities, being applied to, refused to interfere. The mob stripped him, gave him a great number of lashes, and sent him on foot, naked, under a hot sun, to Richmond, whence he with difficulty found a passage to New York.
Of the capture or escape of most of that small band who met with Nat Turner in the woods upon the Travis plantation little can now be known. All appear among the list of convicted, except Henry and Will. General Moore, who occasionally figures as second in command, in the newspaper narratives of that day, was probably the Hark or Hercules before mentioned; as no other of the confederates had belonged to Mrs. Travis, or would have been likely to bear her previous name of Moore. As usual, the newspapers state that most, if not all the slaves, were “the property of kind and indulgent masters.” Whether in any case they were also the sons of those masters is a point ignored; but from the fact that three out of the seven were at first reported as being white men by several different witnesses,–the whole number being correctly given, and the statement therefore probably authentic,–one must suppose that there was an admixture of patrician blood in some of these conspirators.
The subordinate insurgents sought safety as they could. A free colored man, named Will Artist, shot himself in the woods, where his hat was found on a stake and his pistol lying by him; another was found drowned; others were traced to the Dismal Swamp; others returned to their homes, and tried to conceal their share in the insurrection, assuring their masters that they had been forced, against their will, to join,–the usual defence in such cases. The number shot down at random must, by all accounts, have amounted to many hundreds, but it is past all human registration now. The number who had a formal trial, such as it was, is officially stated at fifty-five; of these, seventeen were convicted and hanged, twelve convicted and transported, twenty acquitted, and four free colored men sent on for further trial and finally acquitted. “Not one of those known to be concerned escaped.” Of those executed, one only was a woman: “Lucy, slave of John T. Barrow”: that is all her epitaph, shorter even than that of Wordsworth’s more famous Lucy;–but whether this one was old or young, pure or wicked, lovely or repulsive, octroon or negro, a Cassy, an Emily, or a Topsy, no information appears; she was a woman, she was a slave, and she died.
There is one touching story, in connection with these terrible retaliations, which rests on good authority, that of the Rev. M.B. Cox, a Liberian missionary, then in Virginia. In the hunt which followed the massacre, a slaveholder went into the woods, accompanied by a faithful slave, who had been the means of saving his life during the insurrection. When they had reached a retired place in the forest, the man handed his gun to his master, informing him that he could not live a slave any longer, and requesting him either to free him or shoot him on the spot. The master took the gun, in some trepidation, levelled it at the faithful negro, and shot him through the heart. It is probable that this slaveholder was a Dr. Blunt,–his being the only plantation where the slaves were reported as thus defending their masters. “If this be true,” said the “Richmond Enquirer,” when it first narrated this instance of loyalty, “great will be the desert of these noble minded Africans.” This “noble-minded African,” at least, estimated his own desert at a high standard: he demanded freedom,–and obtained it.
Meanwhile the panic of the whites continued; for, though all others might be disposed of, Nat Turner was still at large. We have positive evidence of the extent of the alarm, although great efforts were afterwards made to represent it as a trifling affair. A distinguished citizen of Virginia wrote three months later to the Hon. W.B. Seabrook of South Carolina,–“From all that has come to my knowledge during and since that affair, I am convinced most fully that every black preacher in the country east of the Blue Ridge was in the secret.” “There is much reason to believe,” says the Governor’s message on December 6th, “that the spirit of insurrection was not confined to Southampton. Many convictions have taken place elsewhere, and some few in distant counties.” The withdrawal of the United States troops, after some ten days’ service, was a signal for fresh excitement, and an address, numerously signed, was presented to the United States Government, imploring their continued stay. More than three weeks after the first alarm, the Governor sent a supply of arms into Prince William, Fauquier, and Orange Counties. “From examinations which have taken place in other counties,” says one of the best newspaper historians of the affair, (in the “Richmond Enquirer” of September 6th,) “I fear that the scheme embraced a wider sphere than I at first supposed.” Nat Turner himself, intentionally or otherwise, increased the confusion by denying all knowledge of the North Carolina outbreak, and declaring that he had communicated his plans to his four confederates within six months; while, on the other hand, a slave-girl, sixteen or seventeen years old, belonging to Solomon Parker, notified that she had heard the subject discussed for eighteen months, and that at a meeting held during the previous May some eight or ten had joined the plot.
It is astonishing to discover, by laborious comparison of newspaper files, how vast was the immediate range of these insurrectionary alarms. Every Southern State seems to have borne its harvest of terror. On the Eastern shore of Maryland great alarm was at once manifested, especially in the neighborhood of Easton and Snowhill; and the houses of colored men were searched for arms even in Baltimore. In Delaware, there were similar rumors through Sussex and Dover Counties; there were arrests and executions; and in Somerset County great public meetings were held, to demand additional safeguards. On election-day, in Seaford, Del., some young men, going out to hunt rabbits, discharged their guns in sport; the men being absent, all the women in the vicinity took to flight; the alarm spread like the “Ipswich Fright”; soon Seaford was thronged with armed men; and when the boys returned from hunting, they found cannon drawn out to receive them.
In North Carolina, Raleigh and Fayetteville were put under military defence, and women and children concealed themselves in the swamps for many days. The rebel organization was supposed to include two thousand. Forty-six slaves were imprisoned in Union County, twenty-five in Sampson County, and twenty-three at least in Duplin County, some of whom were executed. The panic also extended into Wayne, New Hanover, and Lenoir Counties. Four men were shot without trial in Wilmington,–Nimrod, Abraham, Prince, and “Dan the Drayman,” the latter a man of seventy,–and their heads placed on poles at the four corners of the town. Nearly two months afterwards the trials were still continuing; and at a still later day, the Governor in his proclamation recommended the formation of companies of volunteers in every county.
In South Carolina, General Hayne issued a proclamation “to prove the groundlessness of the existing alarms,”–thus implying that serious alarms existed. In Macon, Georgia, the whole population were roused from their beds at midnight by a report of a large force of armed negroes five miles off. In an hour, every woman and child was deposited in the largest building of the town, and a military force hastily collected in front. The editor of the Macon “Messenger” excused the poor condition of his paper, a few days afterwards, by the absorption of his workmen in patrol duties, and describes “dismay and terror” as the condition of the people, of “all ages and sexes.” In Jones, Twiggs, and Monroe Counties, the same alarms were reported; and in one place “several slaves were tied to a tree, while a militia captain hacked at them with his sword.”
In Alabama, at Columbus and Fort Mitchell, a rumor was spread of a joint conspiracy of Indians and negroes. At Claiborne the panic was still greater; the slaves were said to be thoroughly organized through that part of the State, and multitudes were imprisoned; the whole alarm being apparently founded on one stray copy of the “Liberator.”
In Tennessee, the Shelbyville “Freeman” announced that an insurrectionary plot had just been discovered, barely in time for its defeat, through the treachery of a female slave. In Louisville, Kentucky, a similar organization was discovered or imagined, and arrests were made in consequence. “The papers, from motives of policy, do not notice the disturbance,” wrote one correspondent to the Portland “Courier.” “Pity us!” he added.
But the greatest bubble burst in Louisiana. Captain Alexander, an English tourist, arriving in New Orleans at the beginning of September, found the whole city in tumult. Handbills had been issued, appealing to the slaves to rise against their masters, saying that all men were born equal, declaring that Hannibal was a black man, and that they also might have great leaders among them. Twelve hundred stand of weapons were said to have been found in a black man’s house; five hundred citizens were under arms, and four companies of regulars were ordered to the city, whose barracks Alexander himself visited.
If such were the alarm in New Orleans, the story, of course, lost nothing by transmission to other Slave States. A rumor reached Frankfort, Kentucky, that the slaves already had possession of the coast, both above and below New Orleans. But the most remarkable circumstance is, that all this seems to have been a mere revival of an old terror, once before excited and exploded. The following paragraph had appeared in the Jacksonville (Georgia) “Observer,” during the spring previous:–
“FEARFUL DISCOVERY. We were favored, by yesterday’s mail, with a letter from New Orleans, of May 1st, in which we find that an important discovery had been made a few days previous in that city. The following is an extract:–‘Four days ago, as some planters were digging under ground, they found a square room containing eleven thousand stand of arms and fifteen thousand cartridges, each of the cartridges containing a bullet.’ It is said the negroes intended to rise as soon as the sickly season began, and obtain possession of the city by massacring the white population. The same letter states that the mayor had prohibited the opening of Sunday-schools for the instruction of blacks, under a penalty of five hundred dollars for the first offence, and for the second, death.”
Such were the terrors that came back from nine other Slave States, as the echo of the voice of Nat Turner; and when it is also known that the subject was at once taken up by the legislatures of other States, where there was no public panic, as in Missouri and Tennessee,–and when, finally, it is added that reports of insurrection had been arriving all that year from Rio Janeiro, Martinique, St. Jago, Antigua, Caraccas, and Tortola, it is easy to see with what prolonged distress the accumulated terror must have weighed down upon Virginia, during the two months that Nat Turner lay hid.
True, there were a thousand men in arms in Southampton County, to inspire security. But the blow had been struck by only seven men before; and unless there were an armed guard in every house, who could tell but any house might at any moment be the scene of new horrors? They might kill or imprison unresisting negroes by day, but could they resist their avengers by night? “The half cannot be told,” wrote a lady from another part of Virginia, at this time, “of the distresses of the people. In Southampton County, the scene of the insurrection, the distress beggars description. A gentleman who has been there says that even here, where there has been great alarm, we have no idea of the situation of those in that county…. I do not hesitate to believe that many negroes around us would join in a massacre as horrible as that which has taken place, if an opportunity should offer.”
Meanwhile the cause of all this terror was made the object of desperate search. On September 17th the Governor offered a reward of five hundred dollars for his capture, and there were other rewards swelling the amount to eleven hundred dollars,–but in vain. No one could track or trap him. On September 30th a minute account of his capture appeared in the newspapers, but it was wholly false. On October 7th there was another, and on October 18th another; yet all without foundation. Worn out by confinement in his little cave, Nat Turner grew more adventurous, and began to move about stealthily by night, afraid to speak to any human being, but hoping to obtain some information that might aid his escape. Returning regularly to his retreat before daybreak, he might possibly have continued this mode of life until pursuit had ceased, had not a dog succeeded where men had failed. The creature accidentally smelt out the provisions hid in the cave, and finally led thither his masters, two negroes, one of whom was named Nelson. On discovering the terrible fugitive, they fled precipitately, when he hastened to retreat in an opposite direction. This was on October 15th, and from this moment the neighborhood was all alive with excitement, and five or six hundred men undertook the pursuit.
It shows a more than Indian adroitness in Nat Turner to have escaped capture any longer. The cave, the arms, the provisions were found; and lying among them the notched stick of this miserable Robinson Crusoe, marked with five weary weeks and six days. But the man was gone. For ten days more he concealed himself among the wheat-stacks on Mr. Francis’s plantation, and during this time was reduced almost to despair. Once he decided to surrender himself, and walked by night within two miles of Jerusalem before his purpose failed him. Three times he tried to get out of that neighborhood, but in vain: travelling by day was, of course, out of the question, and by night he found it impossible to elude the patrol. Again and again, therefore, he returned to his hiding-place, and during his whole two months’ liberty never went five miles from the Cross Keys. On the 25th of October, he was at last discovered by Mr. Francis, as he was emerging from a stack. A load of buckshot was instantly discharged at him, twelve of which passed through his hat as he fell to the ground. He escaped even then, but his pursuers were rapidly concentrating upon him, and it is perfectly astonishing that he could have eluded them for five days more.
On Sunday, October 30th, a man named Benjamin Phipps, going out for the first time on patrol duty, was passing at noon a clearing in the woods where a number of pine-trees had long since been felled. There was a motion among their boughs; he stopped to watch it; and through a gap in the branches he saw, emerging from a hole in the earth beneath, the face of Nat Turner. Aiming his gun instantly, Phipps called on him to surrender. The fugitive, exhausted with watching and privation, entangled in the branches, armed only with a sword, had nothing to do but to yield; sagaciously reflecting, also, as he afterwards explained, that the woods were full of armed men, and that he had better trust fortune for some later chance of escape, instead of desperately attempting it then. He was correct in the first impression, since there were fifty armed scouts within a circuit of two miles. His insurrection ended where it began; for this spot was only a mile and a half from the house of Joseph Travis.
Torn, emaciated, ragged, “a mere scarecrow,” still wearing the hat perforated with buckshot, with his arms bound to his sides, he was driven before the levelled gun to the nearest house, that of a Mr. Edwards. He was confined there that night; but the news had spread so rapidly that within an hour after his arrival a hundred persons had collected, and the excitement became so intense “that it was with difficulty he could be conveyed alive to Jerusalem.” The enthusiasm spread instantly through Virginia; Mr. Trezvant, the Jerusalem postmaster, sent notices of it far and near; and Governor Floyd himself wrote a letter to the “Richmond Enquirer” to give official announcement of the momentous capture.
When Nat Turner was asked by Mr. T.R. Gray, the counsel assigned him, whether, although defeated, he still believed in his own Providential mission, he answered, as simply as one who came thirty years after him, “Was not Christ crucified?” In the same spirit, when arraigned before the court, “he answered, ‘Not guilty,’ saying to his counsel that he did not feel so.” But apparently no argument was made in his favor by his counsel, nor were any witnesses called,–he being convicted on the testimony of Levi Waller, and upon his own confession, which was put in by Mr. Gray, and acknowledged by the prisoner before the six justices composing the court, as being “full, free, and voluntary.” He was therefore placed in the paradoxical position of conviction by his own confession, under a plea of “Not guilty.” The arrest took place on the thirtieth of October, 1831, the confession on the first of November, the trial and conviction on the fifth, and the execution on the following Friday, the eleventh of November, precisely at noon. He met his death with perfect composure, declined addressing the multitude assembled, and told the sheriff in a firm voice that he was ready. Another account says that he “betrayed no emotion, and even hurried the executioner in the performance of his duty.” “Not a limb nor a muscle was observed to move. His body, after his death, was given over to the surgeons for dissection.”
This last statement merits remark. There would he no evidence that this formidable man was not favored during his imprisonment with that full measure of luxury which slave-jails afford to slaves, but for a rumor which arose after the execution, that he was compelled to sell his body in advance, for purposes of dissection, in exchange for food. But it does not appear probable, from the known habits of Southern anatomists, that any such bargain could have been needed. For in the circular of the South Carolina Medical School for that very year I find this remarkable suggestion:–“Some advantages of a peculiar character are connected with this institution. No place in the United States affords so great opportunities for the acquisition of medical knowledge, subjects being obtained among the colored population in sufficient number for every purpose, and proper dissections carried on without offending any individual.” What a convenience, to possess for scientific purposes a class of population sufficiently human to be dissected, but not human enough to be supposed to take offence at it! And as the same arrangement may be supposed to have existed in Virginia, Nat Turner would hardly have gone through the formality of selling his body for food to those who claimed its control at any rate.
The Confession of the captive was published under authority of Mr. Gray, in a pamphlet, at Baltimore. Fifty thousand copies of it are said to have been printed, and it was “embellished with an accurate likeness of the brigand, taken by Mr. John Crawley. portrait-painter, and lithographed by Endicott & Swett, at Baltimore.” The newly published “Liberator” said of it, at the time, that it would “only serve to rouse up other leaders, and hasten other insurrections,” and advised grand juries to indict Mr. Gray. I have never seen a copy of the original pamphlet, it is not to be found in any of our public libraries, and I have heard of but one as still existing, although the Confession itself has been repeatedly reprinted. Another small pamphlet, containing the main features of the outbreak, was published at New York during the same year, and this is in my possession. But the greater part of the facts which I have given were gleaned from the contemporary newspapers.
Who now shall go back thirty years and read the heart of this extraordinary man, who, by the admission of his captors, “never was known to swear an oath or drink a drop of spirits,”–who, on the same authority, “for natural intelligence and quickness of apprehension was surpassed by few men,” “with a mind capable of attaining anything,”–who knew no book but his Bible, and that by heart,–who devoted himself soul and body to the cause of his race, without a trace of personal hope or fear,–who laid his plans so shrewdly that they came at last with less warning than any earthquake on the doomed community around,–and who, when that time arrived, took the life of man, woman, and child, without a throb of compunction, a word of exultation, or an act of superfluous outrage? Mrs. Stowe’s “Dred” seems dim and melodramatic beside the actual Nat Turner. De Quincey’s “Avenger” is his only parallel in imaginative literature: similar wrongs, similar retribution. Mr. Gray, his self-appointed confessor, rises into a sort of bewildered enthusiasm, with the prisoner before him. “I shall not attempt to describe the effect of his narrative, as told and commented on by himself, in the condemned-hole of the prison. The calm, deliberate composure with which he spoke of his late deeds and intentions, the expression of his fiend-like face when excited by enthusiasm, still bearing the stains of the blood of helpless innocence about him, clothed with rags and covered with chains, yet daring to raise his manacled hands to heaven, with a spirit soaring above the attributes of man,–I looked on him, and the blood curdled in my veins.”
But the more remarkable the personal character of Nat Turner, the greater the amazement felt that he should not have appreciated the extreme felicity of his position as a slave. In all insurrections, the standing wonder seems to be that the slaves most trusted and best used should be most deeply involved. So in this case, as usual, they resorted to the most astonishing theories of the origin of the affair. One attributed it to Free-Masonry, and another to free whiskey,–liberty appearing dangerous, even in these forms. The poor whites charged it upon the free colored people, and urged their expulsion, forgetting that in North Carolina the plot was betrayed by one of this class, and that in Virginia there were but two engaged, both of whom had slave-wives. The slaveholding clergymen traced it to want of knowledge of the Bible, forgetting that Nat Turner knew scarcely anything else. On the other hand, “a distinguished citizen of Virginia” combined in one sweeping denunciation “Northern incendiaries, tracts, Sunday-schools, religion, reading, and writing.”
But whether the theories of its origin were wise or foolish, the insurrection made its mark, and the famous band of Virginia emancipationists who all that winter made the House of Delegates ring with unavailing eloquence–till the rise of slave-exportation to new cotton regions stopped their voices–were but the unconscious mouth-pieces of Nat Turner. In January, 1832, in reply to a member who had called the outbreak a “petty affair,” the eloquent James McDowell thus described the impression it left behind:–
“Now, Sir, I ask you, I ask gentlemen, in conscience to say, was that a ‘petty affair’ which startled the feelings of your whole population,–which threw a portion of it into alarm, a portion of it into panic,–which wrung out from an affrighted people the thrilling cry, day after day, conveyed to your executive, ‘_We are in peril of our lives; send us an army for defence_’? Was that a ‘petty affair’ which drove families from their homes,–which assembled women and children in crowds, without shelter, at places of common refuge, in every condition of weakness and infirmity, under every suffering which want and terror could inflict, yet willing to endure all, willing to meet death from famine, death from climate, death from hardships, preferring anything rather than the horrors of meeting it from a domestic assassin? Was that a ‘petty affair’ which erected a peaceful and confiding portion of the State into a military camp,–which outlawed from pity the unfortunate beings whose brothers had offended,–which barred every door, penetrated every bosom with fear or suspicion,–which so banished every sense of security from every man’s dwelling, that, let but a hoof or horn break upon the silence of the night, and an aching throb would be driven to the heart, the husband would look to his weapon, and the mother would shudder and weep upon her cradle? Was it the fear of Nat Turner, and his deluded, drunken handful of followers, which produced such effects? Was it this that induced distant counties, where the very name of Southampton was strange, to arm and equip for a struggle? No, Sir, it was the suspicion eternally attached to the slave himself,–the suspicion that a Nat Turner might be in every family,–that the same bloody deed might be acted over at any time and in any place,–that the materials for it were spread through the land, and were always ready for a like explosion. Nothing but the force of this withering apprehension, –nothing but the paralyzing and deadening weight with which it falls upon and prostrates the heart of every man who has helpless dependents to protect,–nothing but this could have thrown a brave people into consternation, or could have made any portion of this powerful Commonwealth, for a single instant, to have quailed and trembled.”
While these things were going on, the enthusiasm for the Polish Revolution was rising to its height. The nation was ringing with a peal of joy, on hearing that at Frankfort the Poles had killed fourteen thousand Russians. “The Southern Religious Telegraph” was publishing an impassioned address to Kosciusko; standards were being consecrated for Poland in the larger cities; heroes, like Skrzynecki, Czartoryski, Rozyski, Kaminski, were choking the trump of Fame with their complicated patronymics. These are all forgotten now; and this poor negro, who did not even possess a name, beyond one abrupt monosyllable,–for even the name of Turner was the master’s property,–still lives a memory of terror and a symbol of retribution triumphant.
CONCERNING VEAL:
A DISCOURSE OF IMMATURITY.
The man who, in his progress through life, has listened with attention to the conversation of human beings, who has carefully read the writings of the best English authors, who has made himself well acquainted with the history and usages of his native land, and who has meditated much on all he has seen and read, must have been led to the firm conviction that by VEAL those who speak the English language intend to denote the flesh of calves, and that by a calf is intended an immature ox or cow. A calf is a creature in a temporary and progressive stage of its being. It will not always be a calf; if it live long enough, it will assuredly cease to be a calf. And if impatient man, arresting the creature at that stage, should consign it to the hands of him whose business it is to convert the sentient animal into the impassive and unconscious meat, the nutriment which the creature will afford will be nothing more than immature beef. There may be many qualities of Veal; the calf which yields it may die at very different stages in its physical and moral development; but provided only it die as a calf,–provided only that its meat can fitly be styled Veal,–_this_ will be characteristic of it, that the meat shall be immature meat. It may be very good, very nutritious and palatable; some people may like it better than Beef, and may feed upon it with the liveliest satisfaction; but when it is fairly and deliberately put to us, it must be admitted, even by such as like Veal the best, that Veal is but an immature production of Nature. I take Veal, therefore, as the emblem of IMMATURITY,–of that which is now in a stage out of which it must grow,–of that which, as time goes on, will grow older, will probably grow better, will certainly grow very different. _That_ is what I mean by Veal.
And now, my reader and friend, you will discern the subject about which I trust we are to have some pleasant and not unprofitable thought together. You will readily believe that my subject is not that material Veal which may be beheld and purchased in the butchers’ shops. I am not now to treat of its varied qualities, of the sustenance which it yields, of the price at which it may be procured, or of the laws according to which that price rises and falls. I am not going to take you to the green fields in which the creature which yielded the Veal was fed, or to discourse of the blossoming hawthorn hedges from whose midst it was reft away. Neither shall I speak of the rustic life, the toils, cares, and fancies of the farm-house near which it spent its brief lifetime. The Veal of which I intend to speak is Moral Veal, or (to speak with entire accuracy) Veal Intellectual, Moral, and Aesthetical. By Veal I understand the immature productions of the human mind,–immature compositions, immature opinions, feelings, and tastes. I wish to think of the work, the views, the fancies, the emotions, which are yielded by the human soul in its immature stages,–while the calf (so to speak) is only growing into the ox,–while the clever boy, with his absurd opinions and feverish feelings and fancies, is developing into the mature and sober-minded man. And if I could but rightly set out the thoughts which have at many different times occurred to me on this matter, if one could catch and fix the vague glimpses and passing intuitions of solid unchanging truth, if the subject on which one has thought long and felt deeply were always that on which one could write best, and could bring out to the sympathy of others what a man himself has felt, what an excellent essay this would be! But it will not be so; for, as I try to grasp the thoughts I would set out, they melt away and elude me. It is like trying to catch and keep the rainbow hues you have seen the sunshine cast upon the spray of a waterfall, when you try to catch the tone, the thoughts, the feelings, the atmosphere of early youth.
There can be no question at all as to the fact, that clever young men and women, when their minds begin to open, when they begin to think for themselves, do pass through a stage of mental development which they by-and-by quite outgrow, and entertain opinions and beliefs, and feel emotions, on which afterwards they look back with no sympathy or approval. This is a fact as certain as that a calf grows into an ox, or that veal, if spared to grow, will become beef. But no analogy between the material and the moral must be pushed too far. There are points of difference between material and moral Veal. A calf knows it is a calf. It may think itself bigger and wiser than an ox, but it knows it is not an ox. And if it be a reasonable calf, modest, and free from prejudice, it is well aware that the joints it will yield after its demise will be very different from those of the stately and well-consolidated ox which ruminates in the rich pasture near it. But the human boy often thinks he is a man, and even more than a man. He fancies that his mental stature is as big and as solid as it will ever become. He fancies that his mental productions–the poems and essays he writes, the political and social views he forms, the moods of feeling with which he regards things–are just what they may always be, just what they ought always to be. If spared in this world, and if he be one of those whom years make wiser, the day comes when he looks back with amazement and shame on those early mental productions. He discerns now how immature, absurd, and extravagant they were,–in brief, how Vealy. But at the time, he had not the least idea that they were so. He had entire confidence in himself,–not a misgiving as to his own ability and wisdom. You, clever young student of eighteen years old, when you wrote your prize essay, fancied that in thought and style it was very like Macaulay,–and not Macaulay in that stage of Vealy brilliancy in which he wrote his essay on Milton, not Macaulay the fairest and most promising of calves, but Macaulay the stateliest and most beautiful of oxen. Well, read over your essay now at thirty, and tell us what you think of it. And you, clever, warm-hearted, enthusiastic young preacher of twenty-four, wrote your sermon; it was very ingenious, very brilliant in style, and you never thought but that it would be felt by mature-minded Christian people as suiting their case, as true to their inmost experience. You could not see why you might not preach as well as a man of forty. And if people in middle age had complained, that, eloquent as your preaching was, they found it suited them better and profited them more to listen to the plainer instructions of some good man with gray hair, you would not have understood their feeling, and you might perhaps have attributed it to many motives rather than the true one. But now at five-and-thirty, find out the yellow manuscript, and read it carefully over; and I will venture to say, that, if you were a really clever and eloquent young man, writing in an ambitious and rhetorical style, and prompted to do so by the spontaneous fervor of your heart and readiness of your imagination, you will feel now little sympathy even with the literary style of that early composition,–you will see extravagance and bombast, where once you saw only eloquence and graphic power. And as for the graver and more important matter of the thought of the discourse, I think you will be aware of a certain undefinable shallowness and crudity. Your growing experience has borne you beyond it. Somehow you feel it does not come home to you, and suit you as you would wish it should. It will not do. That old sermon you cannot preach now, till you have entirely recast and rewritten it. But you had no such notion when you wrote the sermon. You were satisfied with it. You thought it even better than the discourses of men as clever as yourself, and ten or fifteen years older. Your case was as though the youthful calf should walk beside the sturdy ox, and think itself rather bigger.
Let no clever young reader fancy, from what has been said, that I am about to make an onslaught upon clever young men. I remember too distinctly how bitter, and indeed ferocious, I used to feel, about eleven or twelve years ago, when I heard men of more than middle age and less than middling ability speak with contemptuous depreciation of the productions and doings of men considerably their juniors, and vastly their superiors,–describing them as _boys_, and as _clever lads_, with looks of dark malignity. There are few more disgusting sights than the envy and jealousy of their juniors, which may be seen in various malicious, commonplace old men; as there is hardly a more beautiful and pleasing sight than the old man hailing and counselling and encouraging the youthful genius which he knows far surpasses his own. And I, my young friend of two-and-twenty, who, relatively to you, may be regarded as old, am going to assume no preposterous airs of superiority. I do not claim to be a bit wiser than you; all I claim is to be older. I have outgrown your stage; but I was once such as you, and all my sympathies are with you yet. But it is a difficulty in the way of the essayist, and, indeed, of all who set out opinions which they wish to be received and acted on by their fellow-creatures, that they seem, by the very act of offering advice to others, to claim to be wiser and better than those whom they advise. But in reality it is not so. The opinions of the essayist or of the preacher, if deserving of notice at all, are so because of their inherent truth, and not because he expresses them. Estimate them for yourself, and give them the weight which you think their due. And be sure of this, that the writer, if earnest and sincere, addressed all he said to himself as much as to any one else. This is the thing which redeems all didactic writing or speaking from the charge of offensive assumption and self-assertion. It is not for the preacher, whether of moral or religious truth, to address his fellows as outside sinners, worse than himself, and needing to be reminded of that of which he does not need to be reminded. No, the earnest preacher preaches to himself as much as to any in the congregation; it is from the picture ever before him in his own weak and wayward heart that he learns to reach and describe the hearts of others, if, indeed, he do so at all. And it is the same with lesser things.