All we
know is, that he an' the Hanlen gals, one of 'em Patty Cannon, was the
head devils in an' after the war."
"It's a bad-lookin' ole house, sir. See, yonder's a coon runnin' out of
the door. Oh! I hear my child cryin' everywhere I look."
"The British begun to run the black people off in the war. The black
people wanted to go to 'em. The British filled the islands in Tangier
yer with nigger camps; they was a goin' to take this whole peninsuly,
an' collect an' drill a nigger army on it to put down Amerikey. When the
war was done, the British sailed away from Chesapeake Bay with thousands
of them colored folks, an' then the people yer begun to hate the free
niggers."
"For lovin' liberty?" the woman sighed, looking at the ball, which had
galled her ankle bloody.
"They hated free niggers as if they was all Tories an' didn't love
Amerikey. So, seein' the free niggers hadn't no friends, these Johnsons
an' Patty Cannon begun to steal 'em, by smoke! There was only a million
niggers in the whole country; Louisiana was a-roarin' for 'em; every
nigger was wuth twenty horses or thirty yokes of oxen, or two good farms
around yer, an' these kidnappers made money like smoke, bought the
lawyers, went into polytics, an' got sech a high hand that they tried a
murderin' of the nigger traders from Georgey an' down thar, comin' yer
full of gold to buy free people. That give 'em a back-set, an' they hung
some of Patty's band--some at Georgetown, some at Cambridge.
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