and he was six feet in stature.
Although he weighed one hundred and eighty pounds, yet he was as supple as a cat and possessed extraordinary strength, and always carried two big horse-pistols, with which I have often seen him, while riding horse back, shoot a crow on the wing.
If ever a fiend walked this earth in human shape, Dick Fallon was the man. I have often heard it said that the wildest animals in the jungles of Africa, when captured and caged, have been known to quail and tremble with fear when confronted with trainers of long experience. I do not know whether it is false or true; but I do know that no other name in all the Southern States was so alarming to the slaves as the name of Dick Fallon, better known before the war as Red Dick, the Negro tamer.
When we emerged from the jail we were commanded to ascend a raised platform, called the auction block, in order that we could be better inspected, which was always customary when buying slaves. We were commanded to walk up and down the platform in order for them to see if there were any defects in our limbs. We were commanded to go through a complete process of gymnastics, and after being thoroughly examined by the planter and his physician that accompanied him, I was pronounced as sound as a rock, as hearty as a buck and as strong as an ox, and nine hundred and fifty dollars in pure gold was counted and paid for me; and I was in the hands of Dick Fallon. He commanded me to come down from the auction block and asked me if I knew who he was. I replied that I did not. He said: "I am Dick Fallon, and I have just paid nine hundred and fifty dollars in hot gold for you, and g___d d___n you, if you do not skin enough cotton in three days for me to get back my money I will skin you just the same as I would any other black squirrel."
John Porter owned three thousand acres of land at a place called Monroe, situated about one hundred and twenty-five miles north of New Orleans. His plantation was stocked with five hundred Negroes; and adjoining his place was the plantation known as the Purgoo Kingdom, owned by E. D. Purgoo. Purgoo himself lived in Paris, France, and his plantation was conducted and run by Dick Fallon, and a half dozen other Negro drivers on the plantation who strictly obeyed and executed the orders of Red Dick.
The Purgoo Kingdom consisted of eleven thousand acres; six thousand five hundred acres was the cotton farm. This mammoth plantation was stocked with one thousand and fifty. Negroes and one hundred and thirteen as ferocious-looking blood-hounds as ever tracked a panting slave. John Porter had justly earned the reputation of being the most humane planter in the State of Louisiana. He would not abuse his slaves nor allow them to be ill-treated by any one else. He lived on the same plantation until the black cloud of rebellion began to settle over Southern soil, and then he sold a few slaves and liberated the rest and moved to Arkansas, where he died with yellow fever.
I did not have long to wait before I was convinced that my new master had justly earned the name of being the most cruel man in the State of Louisiana. Surely he was the most inhuman being that God ever permitted to walk the earth. I will not relate all the many acts of cruelty which I have seen performed by him, or by his command.
The world has long since seen the folly of trafficking in human bodies in America, and a quarter of a million men freely gave their lives for the extirpation of Negro slavery, which was surely the greatest curse known among men.
It would be a crime against my conscience and a sin against God for me to revive the wrongs committed fifty years ago, and not by a human being, but by a fiend in human form. But I shall be compelled to relate one or two incidents in order to connect a link to the chain of circumstances contained in this book.
During the first four or five years that I had been on the plantation I had frequently seen my fellow slaves hanging to the whipping-post — which was made in the shape of a cross — by one hand and one foot, while the other hand and foot was made fast to the ground by a chain running through a post driven into the ground. And although blood was streaming from a hundred gashes made with the lash, yet I have known them to remain hanging for hours in the heat of the burning sun in the month of July. During the summer of 1847 I saw Dick Fallon perpetrate a deed which, perhaps, for cruelty never was equalled in the State of Louisiana.
It is just as visible to my mind now as the day it was enacted, although half a century has passed; and I often wonder why the just retribution which was so swiftly pursuing him, and so close on his heels, did not overtake him before he committed that dreadful act.
One day, just before the blowing of the dinner horn, there were three hundred slaves picking cotton in the field where I was working, and the most of them were women. Women are more expert at picking cotton than men, for their fingers are naturally more supple and not so large as a man's, and their fingers will enter a cotton pod much more easily than a man's. It was customary among the women who had children to carry their nursing babies strapped to their backs, in true Indian style, while picking cotton; and when the child would begin to cry for the want of food, the mother would hasten to her work and get a few rods ahead of the rest of the gang and nurse her child. All of the cotton pickers were compelled to keep in line and side by side while at work; and if any one of them fell behind the gang, even the distance of ten feet, they would feel the keen cut of the Negro driver's lash. It often occurred that one mother who could pick faster than another one, would nurse the other mother's child. Planters were always anxious to have their slaves marry, and would compel them to marry the one of the master's choice, thereby increasing his stock of slaves. Among our number was an Octoroon woman by the name of Nancy. She was married to a Negro on the place by the name of Peter. Slaves were only called by their first names; their last name was the same as that of their masters.
Nancy was a beautiful girl, twenty years of age, always vivacious and full of fun, and made the field ring with her plantation melodies. She had been married about a year, and her child was about two months old. She was called the swiftest cotton picker on the place, but since the birth of her child it had been somewhat of a burden for her to perform her daily task. It seemed as though she had not gained her natural vigor and strength.
The day we now refer to, Nancy's child had been fretting and crying for the want of care; and, in fact, it only lacked a few minutes of the time to hear the blowing of the dinner horn, which was sure to be heard by the time we could reach the end of the row, which was only a few rods away. Nancy was doing her level best to reach the end of the row and care for her hungry child. In fact the whole gang were doing their best to reach the end of the row before the blowing of the dinner horn. Not a song was being sung; not a word spoken; not a sound could be heard, only a steady click, click, click, click of the the fingers of three hundred Negros splitting cotton pods, with the heavy tread of half a dozen Negro drivers just behind them. Nancy was a few feet in the lead of all of us, earnestly struggling to reach the end of the row and nurse her hungry child. Dick Fallon came riding by the plantation from Monroe, where he had been on one of his usual debauches since early in the morning, and on hearing the cry of Nancy's child he leaped from his horse, and came stalking across the field toward us, and the fearful glitter in his eyes and the smell of his breath was a signal that his mission was one of blood. Walking up to the Negro driver that was in the rear of the gang, just behind Nancy, he thus addressed him: "What in h — — l have you got that d — — n little nigger squalling that way for? I could hear it before I left the city;" and before the overseer could answer him he snatched the heavy bull-whip from the overseer's hand, and, approaching Nancy, said to her: "D — — n you; I will stop that brat's crying and set you to squalling in its place;" and as he spoke a blaze of fire seemed to follow the copper wire lash as the heavy whip whistled in its lightning descent upon Nancy's child. The terrible blow even severed the strap by which the child was bound to its mother's back and the infant fell to the ground, and as the mother was bending over it to raise it to her bosom, Fallon snatched the bloody corpse from the ground and threw it in her face. Yes, it was clay! it was a corpse! for the wire lash had plowed its way deep into the left side of the young child's neck and severed its jugular vein as complete as if cut with a razor. Just then the dinner bell was heard, and Fallon went stalking across the field, mounted his horse and went riding homeward to his "dinner," after shedding innocent blood. A complete murderer — — Cain and Abel. Little did he dream, or care, that in all the walks of life, "Thou God seest me." Little did he dream that Justice, the swift and sure messenger of God, was making long and rapid strides and drawing nearer and nearer.
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