three weeks after I had been confined in jail I was standing at the grated window talking to him. It was just before twelve o'clock noon, when we observed two men coming up the street toward the jail. One of the men was the Sheriff of the jail and the other was his old master; and the minute he saw his master a stream of a fire seemed to leap from his eyes, and he said to me: "Yonder comes Master Roberts after me and he will take his dinner in h — — l; for I shall kill him the minute he steps inside of this door;" and as he spoke he seized one of the railings of the bunk on which we slept and with the strength of a tiger he wrenched the solid scantling from its place and glided behind the door, which swung inward when opened.
The keys rattled, the heavy door swung on its rusty hinges and his master stepped inside the jail without the least suspicion of harm or that death was at hand. Why, there crouched near Robert Johnson a human lion, with the scorching thoughts of wife and babe, who had been sold only a few days before.
There was a man near him whom he had robbed of his wife and child, robbed of his freedom, robbed of his God-given rights; yes, and even robbed him of the skin that covered his back, and then had come to return him to that caldron of misery that was boiling with the white flame of despair. What comes next? Why, what do you expect to hear?
Like a lion that springs from the mountain cliff, the slave leaped from his hiding place and a trail of smoke seemed to follow his uplifted club as it came rushing down upon the head of his cruel master. It was an awful blow. I don't believe so powerful a blow was ever struck before or since by any man. The solid beam, or club, was torn into shavings, and Robert Johnson was a headless man, for his head had been swept from his shoulders as completely as if struck by a solid rock shot from the mouth of a volcano.
There was more sympathy manifested in behalf of the Negro than might be expected, considering the crime and place and the vast distinction between slave and master. But it must be remembered that, with the exception of Dick Fallon, Robert Johnson was the most inhuman Negro driver in all the Southern States, and had incurred the ill-will of many of the surrounding planters by his cruel treatment of his Negroes, for his cruelty was the cause of frequent escapes of his slaves and thereby inciting the slaves of surrounding planters to follow their example, and living in the northern part of the State and near the line made it possible for many of their escapes to prove successful. Therefore when he was slayed by one of his own Negroes there was an unusual amount of sympathy manifested in behalf of the slave; and at his trial he was stripped of his clothing in order to impress upon the jurymen the justification for the deed.
And surely he was a pitiable sight to behold. In many places on his back the bare bones were glistening, for his skin was entirely flayed from his body. One of the jurymen exclaimed: "Why! that Negro must surely be Lazarus raised from the grave.
But public opinion was too strong against the Negro those days to let a slave slay his master and then go unpunished. It made no difference in regard to the justification of the act in behalf of the slave.
The jury concluded that if they exonerated the Negro in this case it would be the cause of inciting others to follow his example. He was found guilty and sentenced to be hanged.
There was a very strong petition presented to Governor Palmer, who was then Governor of the State, for the commutation of the sentence to life imprisonment. The petition was formulated and presented by many of the most influential planters in the State. It was finally successful and the Governor commuted the sentence. But when the documents arrived that was to save the life of the condemned man, John Knox, who was then jailor and sheriff, had hanged the Negro just twenty-one minutes before the messenger came.
I was in jail nearly two months before my master was aware of my whereabouts, although I was less than one hundred miles from him. The facilities for conveying news throughout the Southern States were not so great fifty years ago as they are to-day. But at last the advertisement had the desired effect, and two months after my confinement in jail I heard the hoofs of a horse rattling in the street, and on looking out of the window I saw Dick Fallon dismount.
My identification by Fallon and his men was speedy and complete, and I was brought back to the same old home of misery and distress. I was well aware there was a terrible punishment in store for me, and my only desire was to have it over with as soon as possible, but the thought of it was neither alarming nor frightening. Even death itself would have been a cherished friend. For the gaunt specter of disasters and misfortunes had haunted my path until their horrible appearance had become familiar, and I no longer had either fear or trembling while crossing their dismal plain.
We arrived at Monroe about three o'clock Sunday afternoon, and in less than an hour thereafter I was chained to a post a few feet from a bee-hive and given one hundred and twenty-five lashes, then I was blindfolded in order to protect my eyesight, and the swarm of bees was irritated by throwing sand upon them and immediately my bare and bleeding back was completely punctured by their stings. The pain was terrible; it was as though my whole body was on fire; I was in more torment than Dante ever depicted in his frightful illustration of Inferno. My pain was beyond mortal endurance and human strength had forsaken me, and I became insensible to pain or torture.
It is a blessing that human beings are so constructed that when being tortured they are only sensible to pain until it reaches a certain degree of severity, and when that limit is reached they elapse into a comatose state, and for the time being they are invulnerable to pain.
I must have remained in a state of insensibility for hours, for when I aroused from my stupor the night was far spent and I was lying in my cabin, having been carried there soon after dark by Fallon's command. I was in a horrible state; my back was swollen until I looked as if my stomach was on the wrong side of me and gave me the appearance, when moving around my cabin, as though I was continually walking backward.
More than a month elapsed before I was capable of performing any kind of manual labor, and during all of those days of my confinement and torture I never relinquished my desire and intentions to escape at the first opportunity that was offered me. But time doth glide so swiftly by that to-day and to-morrow seems only to change their places. To-day we are born and to-morrow we are buried. Having lived our three score years and ten, in one swing of the pendulum of time, and only one glance at eternity's dial. From the day of our birth it seems as if the thought of the cradle and the grave have been our only companions.
* * * * * * *
Ten months swept by, which were more perplexing to Fallon than all the previous years of his life; for from the very day he committed that inhuman and bloody act, gloom and disasters began to hover around the old plantation; his own soil frowned on him and refused to pursue its natural productiveness. One-half of the cotton seed, when planted, refused to spring into life and would remain in the same condition as though it had not been sown. It was like sowing pebbles; and that portion of the seed that sprung up might just as well have remained in the ground, for all the cotton worms in the State left their accustomed places of destruction and congregated in Fallon's cotton field, while premature frosts and whirlwinds would play havoc with his cotton and leave adjoining plantations undisturbed.
His plantation could justly boast of possessing a thousand head of the finest blooded stock that could be found in all the Southern States; but they seemed to wither away and die, and in less than one year nearly one-third of his stock died from disease or accident.
During this grand carnival of just retribution he was in a terrible rage. There is no mode of expression known among men that could possibly portray his acts or definitely express his disregard of the warnings of God. He was simply a demon roaming the earth, with the huge billows of his coming destruction lashing around him. Thus it is that men go rushing on to sure death, deceived by the very prudential warnings that speak with all the voices in nature's chest and whispers in our ear.
The thought never occurred to him that he was in the red channel of the long prepared destiny of his own construction. The thought never entered his mind that the All Seeing Eye is ever discerning the affairs and acts of men. He believed the affairs of the world to be abandoned to chance, and all his hopes and meditations were centralized in accumulating wealth and recreation. He delighted in tears and groans and immolated human beings without mercy. He was beyond the voice of his own