Charles Johnson - Soulcatcher - And other stories

"Disappointed? Why yes, I suppose you can say that. I've been here in Boston for the last month on business. What is my business? Tobacco. My home is Charleston, and what that means is that I know a great deal more about Negroes and their needs than do you northerners. I've watched this trial, you know, for the last nine days. By my calculations, the cost of returning this runaway to his owner is a riot, the life of one U.S. marshal, and $50,000, which must be taken from the public treasury. No doubt the North will find a new way to tax the South to pay for the expenses. From my hotel window I saw the abolitionists when they stormed the southwest door of the courthouse, determined to break out this nigra Burns and set him free. I was watching too when it was over and the body of that marshal's deputy was brought outside. What I wish to know is why no one has called that criminal action by its proper name: treason. It is blatantly against recent legislation, and the Constitution, to harbor or abet a fugitive nigra. He is property, first and foremost. If you were in that courthouse on the last day of the trial, as I was, you would have seen the recognition in Burns's eyes when his master appeared — it was the look of a craven, guilty animal cornered at last. But was anyone here, in this city, at all pleased that the rightful goods of an honest man were restored? That today the law is being enforced? Hardly. And that is why I am illy pleased. Nay, disgusted. If this tenuous union is to prevail, which I doubt increasingly every day I am in Boston, then you Yankees must honor the customs and way of life in the southern states. You must — I put it to you, sir — stop this rape of our rights. Oh, you don't agree with me? Then consider these facts: since declaring independence, the United States has acquired 2,373,046 square miles of territory from which it has excluded the South. But it is the slavery question that stings us most. On this the North has been irrational. You — and your agitators for Negro manumission who now control the Government — force the South to choose between abolition or secession. We have no say in this Government. None a'tall! As John C. Calhoun put it, what was once a constitutional federal republic has been subverted and transformed into one that is as absolutist as that of the Autocrat of Russia. Can you see the South's position? My position? I do not want my businesses destroyed. My liberties rescinded. Or to see an inferior race released upon the South to wreak havoc with all that is genteel, civilized, and sanctioned by the Almighty. But that is what is happening day after day, and it will result — mark my words — in the dissolution of the union. No, if you knew the Negro better, you would not have such a long face today. But enough! This insufferable Government will be the ruin of us all…"

"Aye, guv'nor, I think it's a pitiful sight! All those soldiers and a cannon just to send one poor black devil back into slavery? Sweet, merciful Heaven, what's to become of us! What'd ye say? That's right I owns this bakery behind us. Worked on ships twelve years afore I could buy it. And it was me put black drapery in the window this morning. Sure now, I worked beside coloreds, unloadin' boats when they come in, and far as I can see they're no diffrent than other blokes here in Boston. I'd wager a few are better citizens. They have to be. Some of 'em are fugitives, sure enough. They run here to get away from their bloody owners, find wives and husbands, and start families. And what's this new law say? I'll tell ye! It says a man kin be torn away from his rightful wife and wee li'l ones, put in chains like that fellah Burns, and taken back to a life of torture. Anyone kin see why this city is under martial law. No self-respectin' Christian can just stand by and watch the Devil at work right outside his door. No, guv'nor, if we don't right this wrong — and bloody soon — we all deserve to burn in hell."

"You want to know about that night? Fine, then, I'll tell you, but only if your newspaper prints exactly what I say. And as I say it. After Anthony was captured and locked away in the courthouse, a public meeting to discuss his plight was called at Faneuil Hall. The time was seven o'clock. I should have been on my way to work at the hotel. I'm a waiter, and a damned good one, but I saw the notice of what they were doing to this black man. I couldn't carry on as if everything was normal, now could I? So I went to the meeting at Faneuil Hall. I sat for an hour listening to the city's important colored and white men debating the question of what to do about poor Anthony's imprisonment. You know, it's always this way when whites and Boston's officially chosen black spokesmen are brought together to confront the evils of oppression. Nothing happens but talk. Guilty whites bare their souls. They listen, oh so sympathetically, to handpicked representatives of the Negro community narrate a litany of abuses they've endured since childhood. And nothing gets done! I hate those meetings. I've been to dozens of them, and after every one the whites feel so much better about themselves because they spent an evening with their darker brothers, and the official Negroes — oh, let me tell you! — they use those meetings to emotionally blackmail white people, wringing concessions out of them for their own personal advancement. I left in disgust with a friend of mine, another waiter, who informed me that only a few blocks away another gathering of only blacks was about to take place to decide what to do about Anthony. We went there straightaway. The room held about ten men and women. There wasn't a Negro spokesman anywhere to be seen. The talk was over in ten minutes, I tell you! For what was there, after all, to discuss? A man was being enslaved. We had to free him. Period. Fifteen minutes after my friend and I arrived, we were all out on the street, moving on the courthouse, battering at its door. When word of our attack reached Faneuil Hall — where they were still talking, trying to determine what to do — the hall emptied, and they joined us in our assault As you know, we were beaten back by the guards, and driven away, but not before that marshal's deputy was killed. No, I cannot tell you how he died. But when he did, that was all the excuse the authorities needed for bringing in eight companies of militia and the United States Marines. The sight of them on the streets makes me sick. They are arrogant! Worse, they tell me that the Government is a willing accomplice in this crime against Anthony Burns. Would that I could do something! "Vbu know, blacks comprise almost the entire class of waiters here in Boston. We took a vow — all of us — to refuse to serve any of the soldiers who have taken over this city. It's a small thing, I know. But during this crisis even meager acts of resistance are better than none at all. And whose side, pray, are you on?"

***

"You want my opinion of this affair? Mine? Do you know who I am? For your information, I am a mystic, a Transcendentalist, and a natural philosopher. I have been imprisoned by this Government for refusing to pay my poll tax, the reason being that I knew it was applied to the support of slavery. I have spoken with John Brown. I am, you should know, an advocate of civil disobedience. And you still want to quote me? Very well. Write this down, young man: My thoughts are murder to the State today. Little by little, week by week, I have watched the American government lose its integrity. Now it endeavors to make all of us agents of injustice. One can no longer be associated with it except in disgrace. Look around you right now. D'you see that detachment of lancers marching in front of Anthony Burns? They are unthinking machines of the State, serving it with their bodies, and they command no more respect from me than men of straw or a lump of dirt. And over there, in the courthouse, we have legislators, politicians, and lawyers who serve the State with their heads, though they rarely make any moral distinctions, and thus are as likely to serve the Devil, without intending it, as God. All of them tools of the State, not men, and the slave Government that is their master has on this day forced them to commit a crime against humanity. My advice to all Anthony Burns's friends who call themselves abolitionists is that they should effectually withdraw their support, both in person and property, from the Government of first Massachusetts, then the United States. They must see that the only social obligation any of us have is to do at any time what we know is right. They must be willing to go to prison for their beliefs, just as Anthony Burns is now being led to a lifelong prison sentence; they must, I am saying, get it into their heads, once and for all, that any State that can do to a man what we have done today must be torn down, destroyed, and let the Devil take the hindmost. Then, when this stain on our souls has been scrubbed away through Revolution, perhaps men and women of God, blacks and whites, can rebuild America with wood less crooked than that used by the Founders. Did you get all that? Even the part about Government officials? Good. Now please excuse me. I must return to my room for a time to write down all the details I can remember of this monstrous day. One of the most important things we can do, young man, is never forget…"