The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860

V >> Various >> The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860

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In September the House of Assembly met. Things were looking worse and
worse. For five months a handful of negroes and mulattoes had defied the
whole force of the island; and they were defending their liberty by
precisely the same tactics through which their ancestors had won it.
Half a million pounds sterling had been spent within this time, besides
the enormous loss incurred by the withdrawal of so many able-bodied men
from their regular employments. "Cultivation was suspended," says an
eye-witness; "the courts of law had long been shut up; and the island at
large seemed more like a garrison under the power of law-martial, than a
country of agriculture and commerce, of civil judicature, industry, and
prosperity." Hundreds of the militia had died of fatigue, large numbers
had been shot down, the most daring of the British officers had fallen,
while the insurgents had been invariably successful, and not one of them
was known to have been killed. Captain Craskell, the banished
superintendent, gave it to the Assembly as his opinion, that the whole
slave population of the island was in sympathy with the Maroons, and
would soon be beyond control. More alarming still, there were rumors of
French emissaries behind the scenes; and though these were explained
away, the vague terror remained. Indeed, the Lieutenant-Governor
announced in his message that he had satisfactory evidence that the
French Convention was concerned in the revolt. A French prisoner named
Murenson had testified that the French agent at Philadelphia (Fauchet)
had secretly sent a hundred and fifty emissaries to the island, and
threatened to land fifteen hundred negroes. And though Murenson took it
all back at last, yet the Assembly was moved to make a new offer of
three hundred dollars for killing or taking a Trelawney Maroon, and a
hundred and fifty dollars for killing or taking any fugitive slave who
had joined them. They also voted five hundred pounds as a gratuity to
the Accompong tribe of Maroons, who had thus far kept out of the
insurrection; and various prizes and gratuities were also offered by the
different parishes, with the same object of self-protection.

The commander-in-chief being among the killed, Colonel Walpole was
promoted in his stead, and brevetted as General, by way of incentive. He
found a people in despair, a soldiery thoroughly intimidated, and a
treasury, not empty, but useless. But the new general had not served
against the Maroons for nothing, and was not ashamed to go to school to
his opponents. First, he waited for the dry season; then he directed all
his efforts towards cutting off his opponents from water; and, most
effectual move of all, he attacked each successive cockpit by dragging
up a howitzer, with immense labor, and throwing in shells. Shells were a
visitation not dreamed of in Maroon philosophy, and their quaint
compliments to their new opponent remain on record. "Damn dat little
buckra!" they said; "he cunning more dan dem toder. Dis here da new
fashion for fight: him fire big ball arter you, and when big ball 'top,
de damn sunting (something) fire arter you again." With which Parthian
arrows of rhetoric the mountaineers retreated.

But this did not last long. The Maroons soon learned to keep out of the
way of the shells, and the island relapsed into terror again. It was
deliberately resolved at last, by a special council convoked for the
purpose, "to persuade the rebels to make peace." But as they had not as
yet shown themselves very accessible to softer influences, it was
thought best to combine as many arguments as possible, and a certain
Colonel Quarrell had hit upon a wholly new one. His plan simply was,
since men, however well disciplined, had proved powerless against
Maroons, to try a Spanish fashion against them, and use dogs. The
proposition was met, in some quarters, with the strongest hostility.
England, it was said, had always denounced the Spaniards as brutal and
dastardly for hunting down the natives of that very soil with
hounds,--and should England now follow the humiliating example? On the
other side, there were plenty who eagerly quoted all known instances of
zooelogical warfare: all Oriental nations, for instance, used elephants
in war, and no doubt would gladly use lions and tigers, also, but for
their extreme carnivorousness, and their painful indifference to the
distinction between friend and foe;--why not, then, use these dogs,
comparatively innocent and gentle creatures? At any rate, "something
must be done"; the final argument always used, when a bad or desperate
project is to be made palatable. So it was voted at last to send to
Havana for an invoice of Spanish dogs, with their accompanying
chasseurs, and the efforts at persuading the Maroons were postponed till
the arrival of these additional persuasives. And when Colonel Quarrell
finally set sail as commissioner to obtain the new allies, all scruples
of conscience vanished in the renewal of public courage and the chorus
of popular gratitude; a thing so desirable must be right; thrice were
they armed who knew their Quarrell just.

But after the parting notes of gratitude died away in the distance, the
commissioner began to discover that he was to have a hard time of it. He
sailed for Havana in a schooner manned with Spanish renegadoes, who
insisted on fighting everything that came in their way,--first a Spanish
schooner, then a French one. He landed at Batabano, struck across the
mountains towards Havana, stopped at Besucal to call on the wealthy
Marquesa de San Felipe y San Jorge, grand patroness of dogs and
chasseurs, and finally was welcomed to Havana by Don Luis de las Casas,
who overlooked, for this occasion only, an injunction of his court
against admitting foreigners within his government,--"the only
accustomed exception being," as Don Luis courteously assured him, "in
favor of foreign traders who came with new negroes." To be sure, the
commissioner had not brought any of these commodities, but then he had
come to obtain the means of capturing some, and so might pass for an
irregular practitioner of the privileged profession.

Accordingly, Don Guillermo Dawes Quarrell (so ran his passport) found no
difficulty in obtaining permission from the governor to buy as many dogs
as he desired. When, however, he carelessly hinted at the necessity of
taking, also, a few men who should have care of the dogs,--this being,
after all, the essential part of his expedition,--Don Luis de las Casas
put on instantly a double force of courtesy, and assured him of the
entire impossibility of recruiting a single Spaniard for English
service. Finally, however, he gave permission and passports for six
chasseurs. Under cover of this, the commissioner lost no time in
enlisting forty; he got them safe to Batabano, but at the last moment,
learning the state of affairs, they refused to embark on such very
irregular authority. When he had persuaded them, at length, the officer
of the fort interposed objections. This was not to be borne, so Don
Guillermo bribed him and silenced him; a dragoon was, however, sent to
report to the governor; Don Guillermo sent a messenger after him and
bribed him, too; and thus, at length, after myriad rebuffs, and after
being obliged to spend the last evening at a puppet-show, in which the
principal figure was a burlesque on his own personal peculiarities, the
weary Don Guillermo, with his crew of renegadoes, and his forty
chasseurs and their one hundred and four muzzled dogs, set sail for
Jamaica.

These new allies were certainly something formidable, if we may trust
the pictures and descriptions in Dallas's History. The chasseur was a
tall, meagre, swarthy Spaniard or mulatto, lightly clad in cotton shirt
and drawers, with broad straw-hat and moccasins of raw hide; his belt
sustaining his long, straight, flat sword or _machete_, like an iron bar
sharpened at one end; and he wore by the same belt three cotton leashes
for his three dogs, sometimes held also by chains. The dogs were a
fierce breed, crossed between hound and mastiff, never unmuzzled but for
attack, and accompanied by smaller dogs called _finders_. It is no
wonder, when these wild and powerful creatures were landed at Montego
Bay, that terror ran through the town, doors were everywhere closed and
windows crowded, not a negro dared to stir, and the muzzled dogs,
infuriated by confinement on shipboard, filled the silent streets with
their noisy barking and the rattling of their chains.

How much would have come of all this in actual conflict does not appear.
The Maroons had already been persuaded to make peace upon certain
conditions and guaranties,--a decision probably accelerated by the
terrible rumors of the bloodhounds, though they never saw them. It was
the declared opinion of the Assembly, confirmed by that of General
Walpole, that "nothing could be clearer than that, if they had been off
the island, the rebels could not have been induced to surrender."
Nevertheless a treaty was at last made, without the direct intervention
of the quadrupeds. Again commissioners went up among the mountains to
treat with negotiators at first invisible; again were hats and jackets
interchanged, not without coy reluctance on the part of the well-dressed
Englishmen; and a solemn agreement was effected. The most essential part
of the bargain was a guaranty of continued independence, demanded by the
suspicious Maroons. General Walpole, however, promptly pledged himself
that no such unfair advantage should be taken of them as had occurred
with the hostages previously surrendered, who were placed in irons, nor
should any attempt be made to remove them from the island. It is painful
to add, that this promise was outrageously violated by the Colonial
government, to the lasting grief of General Walpole, on the ground that
the Maroons had violated the treaty by a slight want of punctuality in
complying with its terms, and by remissness in restoring the fugitive
slaves who had taken refuge among them. As many of the tribe as
surrendered, therefore, were at once placed in confinement, and
ultimately shipped from Port Royal to Halifax, to the number of six
hundred, on the 6th of June, 1796. For the credit of English honor, we
rejoice to know that General Walpole not merely protested against this
utter breach of faith, but indignantly declined the sword of honor which
the Assembly voted him in its gratitude, and retired from military
service forever.

The remaining career of this portion of the Maroons is easily told. They
were first dreaded by the inhabitants of Halifax; then welcomed, when
seen; and promptly set to work on the citadel, then in process of
reconstruction, where the "Maroon Bastion" still remains,--their only
visible memorial. Two commissioners had charge of them, one being the
redoubtable Colonel Quarrell, and twenty-five thousand pounds were
appropriated for their temporary support. Of course they did not
prosper; pensioned colonists never do, for they are not compelled into
habits of industry. After their delicious life in the mountains of
Jamaica, it seemed rather monotonous to dwell upon that barren
soil,--for theirs was such that two previous colonies had deserted
it,--and in a climate where winter lasts seven months in the year. They
had a schoolmaster, and he was also a preacher; but they did not seem to
appreciate that luxury of civilization,--utterly refusing, on grounds of
conscience, to forsake polygamy, and, on grounds of personal comfort, to
listen to the doctrinal discourses of their pastor, who was an ardent
Sandemanian. They smoked their pipes during service-time, and left Old
Montagu, who still survived, to lend a vicarious attention to the
sermon. One discourse he briefly reported as follows, very much to the
point:--"Massa parson say no mus tief, no mus meddle wid somebody wife,
no mus quarrel, mus set down softly." So they sat down very softly, and
showed an extreme unwillingness to get up again. But, not being
naturally an idle race, (at least, in Jamaica the objection lay rather
on the other side,) they soon grew tired of this inaction. Distrustful
of those about them, suspicious of all attempts to scatter them among
the community at large, frozen by the climate, and constantly
petitioning for removal to a milder one, they finally wearied out all
patience. A long dispute ensued between the authorities of Nova Scotia
and Jamaica, as to which was properly responsible for their support; and
thus the heroic race, that for a century and a half had sustained
themselves in freedom in Jamaica, were reduced to the position of
troublesome and impracticable paupers, shuttlecocks between two selfish
parishes. So passed their unfortunate lives, until, in 1800, their
reduced population was transported to Sierra Leone, at a cost of six
thousand pounds, since which they disappear from history.

It was judged best not to interfere with those bodies of Maroons which
had kept aloof from the late outbreak, as the Accompong settlement, and
others. They continued to preserve a qualified independence, and retain
it even now. In 1835, two years after the abolition of slavery in
Jamaica, there were reported sixty families of Maroons as residing at
Accompong Town, eighty families at Moore Town, one hundred and ten
families at Charles Town, and twenty families at Scott Hall, making two
hundred and seventy families in all,--each station being, as of old,
under the charge of a superintendent. But there can be little doubt,
that, under the influences of freedom, they are rapidly intermingling
with the mass of colored population in Jamaica.

The story of the exiled Maroons attracted attention in high quarters, in
its time; the wrongs done to them were denounced in Parliament by
Sheridan and mourned by Wilberforce; while the employment of bloodhounds
against them was vindicated by Dundas, and the whole conduct of the
Colonial government defended, through thick and thin, by Bryan Edwards.
This thorough partisan even had the assurance to tell Mr. Wilberforce,
in Parliament, that he knew the Maroons, from personal knowledge, to be
cannibals, and that, if a missionary were sent among them in Nova
Scotia, they would immediately eat him; a charge so absurd that he did
not venture to repeat it in his History of the West Indies, though his
injustice to the Maroons is even there so glaring as to provoke the
indignation of the more moderate Dallas. But, in spite of Mr. Edwards,
the public indignation ran quite high, in England, against the
bloodhounds and their employers, so that the home ministry found it
necessary to send a severe reproof to the Colonial government. For a few
years the tales of the Maroons thus emerged from mere colonial annals,
and found their way into Annual Registers and Parliamentary
Debates,--but they have vanished from popular memory now. Their record
still retains its interest, however, as that of one of the heroic races
of the world; and all the more, because it is with their kindred that
this nation has to deal, in solving the tremendous problem of
incorporating their liberties with our own. We must remember the story
of the Maroons, because we cannot afford to ignore a single historic
fact which bears upon a question so momentous.

THE PROFESSOR'S STORY.

CHAPTER III.

MR. BERNARD TRIES HIS HAND.

Whether the Student advertised for a school, or whether he fell in with
the advertisement of a school-committee, is not certain. At any rate, it
was not long before he found himself the head of a large district, or,
as it was called by the inhabitants, "deestric" school, in the
flourishing inland village of Pequawkett, or, as it is commonly spelt,
Pigwacket Centre. The natives of this place would be surprised, if they
should hear that any of the readers of a periodical published in Boston
were unacquainted with so remarkable a locality. As, however, some
copies of this periodical may be read at a distance from this
distinguished metropolis, it may be well to give a few particulars
respecting the place, taken from the Universal Gazetteer.

"PIGWACKET, sometimes spelt Pequawkett. A post-village and
township in ---- Co., State of ----, situated in a fine
agricultural region, 2 thriving villages, Pigwacket Centre and
Smithville, 3 churches, several schoolhouses, and many handsome
private residences. Mink River runs through the town, navigable
for small boats after heavy rains. Muddy Pond at N. E. section,
well stocked with horned pouts, eels, and shiners. Products,
beef, pork, butter, cheese. Manufactures, shoe-pegs,
clothes-pins, and tin-ware. Pop. 1373."

The reader may think there is nothing very remarkable implied in this
description. If, however, he had read the town-history, by the Rev.
Jabez Grubb, he would have learned, that, like the celebrated Little
Pedlington, it was distinguished by many _very_ remarkable advantages.
Thus:--

"The situation of Pigwacket is eminently beautiful, looking
down the lovely valley of Mink River, a tributary of the
Musquash. The air is salubrious, and many of the inhabitants
have attained great age, several having passed the allotted
period of 'three-score years and ten' before succumbing to any
of the various 'ills that flesh is heir to.' Widow Comfort
Leevins died in 1836, AEt. LXXXVII. years. Venus, an African,
died in 1841, supposed to be C. years old. The people are
distinguished for intelligence, as has been frequently remarked
by eminent lyceum-lecturers, who have invariably spoken in the
highest terms of a Pigwacket audience. There is a public
library, containing nearly a hundred volumes, free to all
subscribers. The preached word is well attended, there is a
flourishing temperance society, and the schools are excellent.
It is a residence admirably adapted to refined families who
relish the beauties of Nature and the charms of society. The
Honorable John Smith, formerly a member of the State Senate,
was a native of this town."

That is the way they all talk. After all, it is probably pretty much
like other inland New England towns in point of "salubrity,"--that is,
gives people their choice of dysentery or fever every autumn, with a
season-ticket for consumption, good all the year round. And so of the
other pretences. "Pigwacket audience," forsooth! Was there ever an
audience anywhere, though there wasn't a pair of eyes in it brighter
than pickled oysters, that didn't think it was "distinguished for
intelligence"?--"The preached word"! That means the Rev. Jabez Grubb's
sermons. "Temperance society"! "Excellent schools"! Ah, that is just
what we were talking about.

The truth was, that District No. 1, Pigwacket Centre, had had a good
deal of trouble of late with its schoolmasters. The committee had done
their best, but there were a number of well-grown and pretty rough young
fellows who had got the upperhand of the masters, and meant to keep it.
Two dynasties had fallen before the uprising of this fierce democracy.
This was a thing that used to be not very uncommon; but in so
"intelligent" a community as that of Pigwacket Centre, in an era of
public libraries and lyceum-lectures, it was portentous and alarming.

The rebellion began under the ferule of Master Weeks, a slender youth
from a country college, under-fed, thin-blooded, sloping-shouldered,
knock-kneed, straight-haired, weak-bearded, pale-eyed, wide-pupilled,
half-colored; a common type enough in in-door races, not rich enough to
pick and choose in their alliances. Nature kills off a good many of this
sort in the first teething-time, a few in later childhood, a good many
again in early adolescence; but every now and then one runs the gauntlet
of her various diseases, or rather forms of one disease, and grows up,
as Master Weeks had done.

It was a very foolish thing for him to try to inflict personal
punishment on such a lusty young fellow as Abner Briggs, Junior, one of
the "hardest customers" in the way of a rough-and-tumble fight that
there were anywhere round. No doubt he had been insolent, but it would
have been better to overlook it. It pains me to report the events which
took place when the master made his rash attempt to maintain his
authority. Abner Briggs, Junior, was a great, hulking fellow, who had
been bred to butchering, but urged by his parents to attend school, in
order to learn the elegant accomplishments of reading and writing, in
which he was sadly deficient. He was in the habit of talking and
laughing pretty loud in school-hours, of throwing wads of paper reduced
to a pulp by a natural and easy process, of occasional insolence and
general negligence. One of the soft, but unpleasant missiles just
alluded to, flew by the master's head one morning, and flattened itself
against the wall, where it adhered in the form of a convex mass in _alto
rilievo_. The master looked round and saw the young butcher's arm in an
attitude which pointed to it unequivocally as the source from which the
projectile had taken its flight.

Master Weeks turned pale. He must "lick" Abner Briggs, Junior, or
abdicate. So he determined to lick Abner Briggs, Junior.

"Come here, Sir!" he said; "you have insulted me and outraged the
decency of the schoolroom often enough! Hold out your hand!"

The young fellow grinned and held it out. The master struck at it with
his black ruler, with a will in the blow and a snapping of the eyes, as
much as to say that he meant to make him smart this time. The young
fellow pulled his hand back as the ruler came down, and the master hit
himself a vicious blow with it on the right knee. There are things no
man can stand. The master caught the refractory youth by the collar and
began shaking him, or rather shaking himself against him.

"Le' go o' that are coat, naow," said the fellow, "or I'll make ye!
'T 'll take tew on ye t' handle me, I tell ye, 'n' then ye caaent dew
it!"--and the young pupil returned the master's attention by catching
hold of _his_ collar.

When it comes to that, the _best man_, not exactly in the moral sense,
but rather in the material, and more especially the muscular point of
view, is very apt to have the best of it, irrespectively of the merits
of the case. So it happened now. The unfortunate schoolmaster found
himself taking the measure of the sanded floor, amid the general uproar
of the school. From that moment his ferule was broken, and the
school-committee very soon had a vacancy to fill.

Master Pigeon, the successor of Master Weeks, was of better stature, but
loosely put together, and slender-limbed. A dreadfully nervous kind of
man he was, walked on tiptoe, started at sudden noises, was distressed
when he heard a whisper, had a quick, suspicious look, and was always
saying, "Hush!" and putting his hands to his ears. The boys were not
long in finding out this nervous weakness, of course. In less than a
week a regular system of torments was inaugurated, full of the most
diabolical malice and ingenuity. The exercises of the conspirators
varied from day to day, but consisted mainly of foot-scraping, solos on
the slate-pencil, (making it _screech_ on the slate,) falling of heavy
books, attacks of coughing, banging of desk-lids, boot-creaking, with
sounds as of drawing a cork from time to time, followed by suppressed
chuckles.

Master Pigeon grew worse and worse under these inflictions. The rascally
boys always had an excuse for any one trick they were caught at.
"Couldn' help coughin', Sir." "Slipped out o' m' han', Sir." "Didn' go
to, Sir." "Didn' dew 't o' purpose, Sir." And so on,--always the best of
reasons for the most outrageous of behavior. The master weighed himself
at the grocer's on a platform-balance, some ten days after he began
keeping the school. At the end of a week he weighed himself again. He
had lost two pounds. At the end of another week he had lost five. He
made a little calculation, based on these data, from which he learned
that in a certain number of months, going on at this rate, he should
come to weigh precisely nothing at all; and as this was a sum in
subtraction he did not care to work out in practice, Master Pigeon took
to himself wings and left the school-committee in possession of a letter
of resignation and a vacant place to fill once more.

This was the school to which Mr. Bernard Langdon found himself appointed
as master. He accepted the place conditionally, with the understanding
that he should leave it at the end of a month, if he were tired of it.

The advent of Master Langdon to Pigwacket Centre created a much more
lively sensation than had attended that of either of his predecessors.
Looks go a good ways all the world over, and though there were several
good-looking people in the place, and Major Bush was what the natives of
the town called a "hahnsome mahn," that is, big, fat, and red, yet the
sight of a really elegant young fellow, with the natural air which grows
up with carefully-bred young persons, was a novelty. The Brahmin blood
which came from his grandfather as well as from his mother, a direct
descendant of the old Flynt family, well known by the famous tutor,
Henry Flynt, (see Cat. Harv. Anno 1693,) had been enlivened and enriched
by that of the Wentworths, which had had a good deal of ripe old Madeira
and other generous elements mingled with it, so that it ran to gout
sometimes in the old folks, and to high spirit, warm complexion, and
curly hair in some of the younger ones. The soft curling hair Mr.
Bernard had inherited,--something, perhaps, of the high spirit; but that
we shall have a chance of finding out by-and-by. But the long sermons
and the frugal board of his Brahmin ancestry, with his own habits of
study, had told upon his color, which was subdued to something more of
delicacy than one would care to see in a young fellow with rough work
before him. This, however, made him look more interesting, or, as the
young ladies at Major Bush's said, "interestin'."

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