Abolition

by Tim Black

  When he was outside hearing range of the white men, Tesla whispered. “I think it may be best for you to retire from the field, as they say, Samuel.”

  “Yes,” Samuel agreed. “Thank you, Mr. Tesla. You saved my life.”

  “I didn’t do anything more than Mr. Catton and Mr. Foote did to save Victor from a crossfire at Gettysburg…let us check on the others.”

  Mr. Greene had revived and was standing up. Minerva was nursing Victor, making him put his head back as she held a handkerchief over his nose to staunch the bleeding.

  “Samuel!” Mr. Greene said as he saw that his student was safe. “Kudos, Nikola. Thank you so much. Where did you get the pistol?”

  Tesla smiled. “Just part of the apparition, Nathan,” he smiled.

  Suddenly a commotion interrupted their conversation. “There he is!” “There’s the beast!” People shouted.

  Samuel, whose knees were still a bit rubbery from the anxiety of nearly being lynched, watched as a short man, dressed in rags and shackled in irons, which he raised above his head in a symbol of defiance, shuffled out of the courthouse into the street. He stopped. An ox cart was brought up and Nat Turner climbed into the ox cart. With a slap to the oxen’s rear end, the cart slowly moved toward the tree at the end of the street.

  The scene reminded Samuel of a scene out of The Tale of Two Cities when the condemned Frenchmen were carted off to the guillotine. People on either side of the cart cursed and spat on the condemned man, uttering racial slurs and cries of vengeance. When the cart arrived beneath an outstretched limb of the tree, a preacher, appropriately dressed in a black outfit, asked if Nat Turner had anything he wanted to say. Stoically, the condemned leader of the largest slave revolt in United States history said, “Was not Christ crucified in Jerusalem? I’m ready.”

  Nat Turner’s last comment drew angry comments from the crowd as the executioner slipped the noose around the condemned man’s neck.

  “Hang him high!” one man shouted. And after a moment, the sheriff swatted the behind of the ox and the cart lunged forward and left Nat Turner dangling from the limb of the tree.

  “I think we best be going,” Mr. Greene advised. “I don’t want to try our luck much longer amid this bloodthirsty crowd.”

  As they walked out of Jerusalem, Virginia, before noon on November 11, 1831, Samuel looked back to see that Nat Turner’s body was still, until a breath of wind seemed to move it and give the appearance that it was dancing. Into his mind, once more he heard the voice of Billie Holliday.

  Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze

  Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

  Back at the portable, Samuel retreated to the closet to change his pants. Like a Boy Scout leader, Mr. Greene was always prepared, having brought along extra clothes for each of his students.

  When Samuel emerged from the closet and the students were all back at their desks, buckling up for the next hop, Mr. Greene said, “First off, I want to thank Mr. Tesla for his quick-thinking intervention. I’m not so sure I will ever be able to look at a KFC commercial again without laughing. Kudos, Mr. T…

  “Now, back to business. Nat Turner’s body was dissected after the execution. In something akin to the Nazis, his skin was made into a purse, his flesh was turned into grease and his bones were passed out like souvenirs. I am surprised about his Jesus statement. It is in the Confession, but not in any other account. The ‘I’m ready,’ however, was recorded. Perhaps his comparing himself to Jesus was too much for the reporters to write down. Who knows. That is more of the enigma that is Nat Turner. His rebellion had an impact. For the first time on record, the Virginia House of Delegates debated gradual emancipation, something that had never been brought up before. But the idea was quickly squelched by the politically powerful planters. I would like to read from Christine Gibson’s article...

  Sources and the country’s unease with its slaveholding past. And while archaeologists argue over whether an unidentified skull is Turner’s and whether his partial skeleton lies buried under such-and-such a Virginia parking lot, historians and activists debate which of his many personalities and motives assigned him in the last century and a half are truly his. But his (Nat Turner’s) body was shredded as well, and just as the parts of his body may never be put back together again, so too is his legacy fatally fragmented, fractured by unreliable sources.

  The teacher stopped when he saw a hand raise. “Yes, Victor?”

  “Is it true that the state of Virginia paid Nat Turner’s master $375?”

  “Well his master’s estate, since Nat Turner’s owner was one of the first people killed. The state of Virginia also paid other masters for the slaves that were executed because of the insurrection.”

  Samuel looked at Tesla. “Why did you say I was worth a thousand dollars, Mr. Tesla?”

  “It was the figure that popped into my mind.”

  “And the dollar for the white man, how did you manage that?”

  “It was an apparition. By now the man will realize that I tricked him. That he received nothing from me except an upbraiding.”

  Minerva liked the word “upbraiding.” It sounded so cultured, but that was Tesla, after all, a cultured man.

  “I bet the guy is pissed,” Victor said.

  Minerva frowned at Victor’s vulgarity. Why couldn’t Victor just say “angry” instead of the vulgarity? Some poor woman would have a lot of work to do to train Victor Bridges, she mused. But with a smile.

  “I sure hope so,” Tesla replied to Victor’s comment as he returned to his ghostly self. “Reanimation tires me out,” he added. Then, in a bit of theatrics, the ghost of Nikola Tesla dissolved into a puddle of protoplasm on the floor, shocking not only the students, but Mr. Greene as well.

  “Tesla!” the teacher shouted.

  And with the accompanying shrieks from the students, the classroom filled with deep-throated laughter and Nikola Tesla regained his gaseous form.

  “That wasn’t funny, Nikola,” Carl Bridenbaugh said. “You scared me to death.”

  “I think it is a little late for that Carl,” Tesla commented.

  “Touché!” Bridenbaugh laughed.

  “Why, Mr. Tesla?” Mr. Green asked. “Why did you scare us so?”

  “Nathan, it was just a bit of fun. A poltergeist at the Cassadaga Hotel taught me that trick. I just thought it would be fun to try it,” the ghost said.

  “It’s unbecoming for a dead person,” Heather suggested.

  “Hey,” Samuel said. “Lay off Mr. Tesla. He saved my life. Remember that!”

  Mr. Greene smiled. “Yes, students. We owe Mr. Tesla a debt of gratitude. I, for one, forgive him for his little prank. What he did back in Jerusalem shall live on in the annals of the History Channelers,” Mr. Greene declared. “I hope, however, not in the historical record of that day.”

  Victor wondered how an act by a dead man could live on, but he didn’t dwell on it. He was hungry. In the back of the classroom was a large cooler, filled with sodas and sandwiches. While the others were discussing the appropriateness of Tesla’s trick, Victor unbuckled his seat belt, left his desk and went searching for a ham and cheese after discovering that all of Colonel Sanders’ victuals had been consumed.

  Halfway through woofing down the sandwich, Mr. Greene called out to Victor Bridges. “Victor, would you care to join us? We’re about to jump to Boston in 1835 to see William Lloyd Garrison dragged through the streets by a proslavery mob.”

  Sounds delightful, Victor thought as he shoved the remainder of the sandwich into his pie hole.

  Chapter 6

  As Nikola Tesla brought the portable in for a landing in Boston in 1835, Mr. Greene addressed the class.

  “For the next few hours, we are going to witness the suppression of freedom of the press, and freedom of speech in the United States of American in the 1830s. Our first venture is to witness what has been called the ‘Boston Riot of 1835.’ Beginning in 1831, William Lloyd Garrison began publis
hing The Liberator, a weekly abolitionist newspaper which quickly became the most influential publication in the abolitionist universe. Certainly it was the most controversial. In fact, many citizens of Virginia blamed Garrison’s newspaper for inciting Nat Turner’s insurrection. Garrison and many other radical abolitionists demanded the immediate end to slavery, but even in New England, Garrison and his believers were a small minority of the population. In fact, the radical abolitionists scared many New Englanders. Most people believed the radical abolitionists were a threat to the very institutions of society. After all, there were many textile mills in New England that relied on cotton for their existence. Cutting off cotton from the south would have an economic impact on the north. Slavery was essential to keep the cotton coming. By 1834 there were anti-abolition riots in New York and even in Philadelphia, which had been so friendly to abolition. Early in 1835 the poet John Greenleaf Whittier and British abolitionist George Thompson were stoned in Concord, New Hampshire. On October 21, 1835, Thompson was scheduled to speak in Boston and a mob went looking for the British man. The mob was made up of gentlemen, businessmen who owned textile factories as well as merchants and other well-to-do Bostonians. Imagine today, a group of Wall Street businessmen forming a mob, and you get a facsimile of the Boston mob of 1835. The well-heeled and well-respected men of Boston were out for blood. What truly scared the businessmen was an abolitionist like Thompson speaking in Boston, because Britain ended slavery in its empire in 1833. By the way, you may remember one of the reasons that Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on slavery was to keep Britain from giving military support to the Confederacy during the Civil War. And if Britain could abolish slavery, the mob feared that perhaps the United States would follow Britain’s lead as well. But of course, that would not occur until over 600,000 men died in what the Southerners preferred to call ‘The War Between the States,’ or ‘The War of Northern Aggression.’

  “So,” the teacher continued, “we are going to walk over to the office of the Liberator and attend a meeting of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society, which was, by the way, interracial, truly ahead of its time. Thompson was scheduled to speak to the women and notices of his upcoming speech had circulated through the city. A mob of businessmen had formed to stop Thompson from addressing the women.”

  Victor walked alongside Minerva Messinger on the cobblestone street in the late afternoon and, feeling strangely tongue-tied, attempted to break the conversational ice with his old girlfriend. “How is Yale, Minerva?”

  She swiveled her head and frowned at him. “After all this time, that is what you want to ask me, Victor?” she said, a bit irritated. And, as soon as she said that, she grimaced. Victor never was a great conversationalist. But he was trying, she told herself. Give him a chance, stupid.

  “Yeah,” Victor smiled. “That was pretty lame wasn’t it?”

  Darn that smile of his she thought. It was infectious. She smiled too.

  “What did you really want to ask, Victor? Am I seeing anyone?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “I’m not,” she assured him. She took his hand suddenly, felt a tingle, squeezed his fingers and just as promptly released Victor’s hand. “Let’s talk about this after we get home.”

  “Okay,” Victor said.

  Bette Kromer, who had been following behind the pair, said with an eyeball roll, “It can wait, lovebirds, let’s not have our hormones get the best of us for the moment.”

  Before Minerva could respond to her friend, Mr. Greene announced, “We are here. This is the office of Garrison’s paper, The Liberator.”

  Inside the office forty or more women were gathered awaiting the appearance of George Thompson. In a corner stood a mousy little man wearing spectacles who Victor recognized immediately to be a young William Lloyd Garrison, perhaps the most incendiary abolitionist in the nation. The students huddled around Mr. Greene as he whispered,

  “The lady at the front of the group in the long dress and the bonnet, who is about to call the meeting to order, is a wealthy socialite who founded the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society, two years before, after reading about the British abolition of slavery. Her name is Maria Chapman and she is just as much of a firebrand as Garrison.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Maria Chapman began. “Mr. Thompson has been delayed, but I expect him here any moment. Please be seated and we can begin our meeting and then pause when Mr. Thompson arrives. What is that commotion?” she asked.

  Voices were emanating from outside. Male voices. Shouting. Angry voices!

  “Let’s get the British bastard!” a man shouted.

  “Let’s string him up,” shouted another.

  Victor and Samuel moved to a window to watch. Their teacher joined them. A man was standing on a chair attempting to get the mob’s attention. Failing at first to calm the agitated group of several hundred businessmen, the man on the chair raised a pistol and fired the gun into the air, striking the mob into silence.

  “Who the heck is he?” Victor asked.

  “That is the mayor of Boston, Theodore Lyman,” Mr. Greene said. “He tried to get the mob to disperse.”

  After a short pause created by the mayor’s gunshot, the cries from the crowd began anew. Mayor Lyman abandoned his chair and proceeded through the front door of the office of the newspaper.

  “Ladies,” he said. “I beseech thee to leave for your own safety!”

  Icily, Maria Chapman replied, “Mayor, we have a 1st Amendment right to assemble. If this is the last bulwark of freedom, we may as well die here as anywhere,” she proclaimed loudly.

  “You go girl!” Heather shouted out, adding after seeing the stunned looks on the faces of the 19th century women, “Oops, my bad.”

  Suddenly, angry men entered the room. “Where’s the limey?” one man asked, as the mob sought the British abolitionist.

  Victor glimpsed William Lloyd Garrison dart out a back door of the office. One man grabbed Maria Chapman by the waist and, using a fireman’s carry, carried the founder of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society from the room. The other women meekly followed their leader out the door, as did the teacher and students from Cassadaga Area High School. Out on the street a well-dressed man was taking a hatchet to a wooden sign that announced the speaking engagement of George Thompson. Maria Chapman, who had been released from the ignominy of being carried outside, was silently stewing, the anger on her face easily readable. She did, however, hold her tongue. From an alley, several men appeared with a hostage.

  William Lloyd Garrison was the hostage, and he was trussed up like a trophy deer on the back of a pickup truck, Victor thought. His arms and legs were tied, and there was a noose around his neck. Laughing, the kidnappers began dragging the abolitionist, his body thumping along the cobblestones of Washington Street.

  The mayor of Boston climbed upon his chair to plead with the kidnappers to release Garrison. This time, one of the mob kicked the chair and the mayor tumbled to the street, which caused laughter among the men. Meanwhile, Garrison was dragged back and forth along the street, his clothes tattered, his spectacles shattered, blood coming from a wound to his face caused by its contact with the pavement.

  Victor watched as two burly, rough-looking men, who could not be confused with gentlemen, came forth and pushed the kidnappers aside, taking possession of the aggrieved abolitionist.

  Now what? Victor wondered. Were they going to lynch William Lloyd Garrison? He was surprised to see that the working-class men untied Garrison’s chains of rope and escorted the beaten newspaper editor down the street and away from the mob. By this time more than thirty constables had arrived to help the mayor reestablish order. They thanked the two working men and took Garrison in protective custody and marched the abolitionist to the Old State House.

  Mr. Greene motioned for his students to follow the constables. At the Old State House, another group of men gathered and attempted to retrieve Garrison from the authorities. A carriage arrived, and the new group of m
en attempted to capture Garrison before he could enter the conveyance. They were beaten back by the nightsticks of the constables and Garrison was driven away for his own safety.

  “To the Leverett Street Jail,” Mr. Greene said to the group. “Follow me.”

  After assuring the jailer that he and his companions were abolitionists, Mr. Greene and his students were able to visit William Lloyd Garrison in his protective cell. Sitting on the other side of the bars, Garrison said, “Please excuse my appearance. It is quite an experience being dragged through the street. But it is a small matter as such events happen daily to the Negroes in our nation. I would be much obliged if one of you kind folks would write down what I am about to say as I am afraid, without my glasses, I cannot see well enough to write. My jailer was kind enough to give me quill and ink and paper.”

  “I would be happy to help, Mr. Garrison,” Heather replied.

  Through the bars, Garrison handed Heather a quill and a bottle of ink. Looking at the quill, Heather seemed perplexed.

  “Let me assist Mr. Garrison,” Mr. Greene said, seeing the discomfort on Heather’s face. He took the quill and bottle of ink and pulled up a chair. Garrison handed him a plain piece of paper as well and began to dictate.

  “William Lloyd Garrison was put into this cell on Wednesday afternoon, October 21, 1835, to save him from the violence of a,.. Garrison paused to scowl.... a respectable and influential mob (please add quotes for emphasis) who sought to destroy him for preaching the abominable and dangerous doctrine that ‘all men are created equal’ and that all oppression is odious in the sight of God.’ Will you read that back to me…mister…”

  “Greene,” the teacher said. “Nathan Greene at your service,” he added and then read back to the famous abolitionist what he had said.

  “Good,” Garrison said when Mr. Greene finished reading back the dictation. “Perhaps that will be as famous as ‘I will not equivocate, I will not excuse, I will not retreat a single inch…’”