University of Virginia Library

24. CHAPTER XXIV.
TOM GORDON'S PLANS.

Tom Gordon, in the mean while, had commen ed ruling
his paternal plantation in a manner very different from the
former indulgent system. His habits of reckless and boundless
extravagance, and utter heedlessness, caused his cravings
for money to be absolutely insatiable; and, within legal
limits, he had as little care how it was come by, as a highway
robber. It is to be remarked that Tom Gordon was a
worse slaveholder and master from the very facts of certain
desirable qualities in his mental constitution; for, as
good wine makes the strongest vinegar, so fine natures
perverted make the worse vice. Tom had naturally a perfectly
clear, perceptive mind, and an energetic, prompt
temperament. It was impossible for him, as many do, to
sophisticate and delude himself with false views. He
marched up to evil boldly, and with his eyes open. He
had very little regard for public opinion, particularly the
opinion of conscientious and scrupulous people. So he carried
his purposes, it was very little matter to him what any
one thought of them or him; they might complain till
they were tired.

After Clayton had left the place, he often pondered the
dying words of Nina, “that he should care for her people;
that he should tell Tom to be kind to them.” There was
such an impassable gulf between the two characters, that
it seemed impossible that any peaceable communication
should pass between them. Clayton thought within himself
that it was utterly hopeless to expect any good arising

from the sending of Nina's last message. But the subject
haunted him. Had he any right to withhold it? Was it
not his duty to try every measure, however apparently
hopeless?

Under the impulse of this feeling, he one day sat down
and wrote to Tom Gordon an account, worded with the
utmost simplicity, of the last hours of his sister's life,
hoping that he might read it, and thus, if nothing more,
his own conscience be absolved.

Death and the grave, it is true, have sacred prerogatives,
and it is often in their power to awaken a love which did
not appear in life. There are few so hard as not to be
touched by the record of the last hours of those with whom
they have stood in intimate relations. A great moralist
says, “There are few things not purely evil of which we
can say, without emotion, this is the last.”

The letter was brought to Tom Gordon one evening
when, for a wonder, he was by himself; his associates
being off on an excursion, while he was detained at home
by a temporary illness. He read it over, therefore, with
some attention. He was of too positive a character, however,
too keenly percipient, not to feel immediate pain in
view of it. A man of another nature might have melted
in tears over it, indulged in the luxury of sentimental
grief, and derived some comfort, from the exercise, to go on
in ways of sin. Not so with Tom Gordon. He could not
afford to indulge in anything that roused his moral nature.
He was doing wrong of set purpose, with defiant energy;
and his only way of keeping his conscience quiet was to
maintain about him such a constant tumult of excitement
as should drown reflection. He could not afford a tête-à-tête
conversation with his conscience; — having resolved, once
for all, to go on in his own wicked way, serving the flesh
and the devil, he had to watch against anything that
might occasion uncomfortable conflict in his mind. He
knew very well, lost man as he was, that there was something
sweet and pure, high and noble, against which he

was contending; and the letter was only like a torch,
which a fair angel might hold up, shining into the filthy lair
of a demon. He could not bear the light; and he had no
sooner read the note, than he cast it into the fire, and rang
violently for a hot brandy-toddy, and a fresh case of cigars.
The devil's last, best artifice to rivet the fetters of his captives
is the opportunity which these stimulants give them
to command insanity at will.

Tom Gordon was taken to bed drunk; and, if a sorrowful
guardian spirit hovered over him as he read the letter,
he did not hear the dejected rustle of its retreating wings.
The next day nothing was left, only a more decided antipathy
to Clayton, for having occasioned him so disagreeable a
sensation.

Tom Gordon, on the whole, was not unpopular in his
vicinity. He determined to rule them all, and he did. All
that uncertain, uninstructed, vagrant population, which
abound in slave states, were at his nod and beck. They
were his tools — prompt to aid him in any of his purposes,
and convenient to execute vengeance on his adversaries.
Tom was a determined slaveholder. He had ability enough
to see the whole bearings of that subject, from the beginning
to the end; and he was determined that, while he
lived, the first stone should never be pulled from the edifice
in his state. He was a formidable adversary, because
what he wanted in cultivation he made up in unscrupulous
energy; and, where he might have failed in argument, he
could conquer by the cudgel and the bludgeon. He was,
as Frank Russel had supposed, the author of the paragraph
which had appeared in the Trumpet of Freedom, which had
already had its effect in awakening public suspicion.

But what stung him to frenzy, when he thought of it,
was, that every effort which he had hitherto made to recover
possession of Harry had failed. In vain he had
sent out hunters and dogs. The swamp had been tracked
in vain. He boiled and burned with fierce tides of passion,
as he thought of him in his security defying his power.

Some vague rumors had fallen upon his ear of the existence,
in the swamp, of a negro conspirator, of great energy
and power, whose lair had never yet been discovered; and
he determined that he would raise heaven and earth to find
him. He began to suspect that there was, somehow, understanding
and communication between Harry and those
who were left on the plantation, and he determined to
detect it. This led to the scene of cruelty and tyranny to
which we made allusion in a former chapter. The mangled
body was buried, and Tom felt neither remorse nor shame.
Why should he, protected by the express words of legal
decision? He had only met with an accident in the exercise
of his lawful power on a slave in the act of rebellion.

“The fact is, Kite,” he said, to his boon-companion,
Theophilus Kite, as they were one day sitting together,
“I 'm bound to have that fellow. I 'm going to publish a
proclamation of outlawry, and offer a reward for his head.
That will bring it in, I 'm thinking. I 'll put it up to a
handsome figure, for that will be better than nothing.”

“Pity you could n't catch him alive,” said Kite, “and
make an example of him!”

“I know it,” said Tom. “I 'd take him the long way
round, that I would! That fellow has been an eye-sore to
me ever since I was a boy. I believe all the devils that
are in me are up about him.”

“Tom,” said Kite, “you 've got the devil in you — no
mistake!”

“To be sure I have,” said Tom. “I only want a chance
to express him. I wish I could get hold of the fellow's
wife! I could make him wince there, I guess. I 'll get
her, too, one of these days! But, now, Kite, I 'll tell
you, the fact is, somebody round here is in league with
him. They know about him, I know they do. There 's that
squeaky, leathery, long-nosed Skinflint, trades with the niggers
in the swamp — I know he does! But he is a double-and-twisted
liar, and you can't get anything out of him.
One of these days I 'll burn up that old den of his, and

shoot him, if he don't look out! Jim Stokes told me that
he slept down there, one night, when he was tracking, and
that he heard Skinflint talking with somebody between
twelve and one o'clock; and he looked out, and saw him
selling powder to a nigger.”

“O, that could n't be Harry,” said Kite.

“No, but it 's one of the gang that he is in with. And,
then, there 's that Hark. Jim says that he saw him talking,
— giving a letter, that he got out of the post-office, to a man
that rode off towards the woods. I thought we 'd have the
truth out of his old hide! But he did n't hold out as I
thought he would.”

“Hokum don't understand his business,” said Kite.
“He should n't have used him up so fast.”

“Hokum is a bother,” said Tom, “like all the rest of
those fellows! Hark was a desperately-resolute fellow, and
it 's well enough he is dead, because he was getting sullen,
and making the others rebellious. Hokum, you see, had
taken a fancy to his wife, and Hark was jealous.”

“Quite a romance!” said Kite, laughing.

“And now I 'll tell you another thing,” said Tom, “that
I 'm bound to reform. There 's a canting, sneaking, dribbling,
whining old priest, that 's ravaging these parts, and
getting up a muss among people about the abuses of the
slaves; and I 'm not going to have it. I 'm going to shut
up his mouth. I shall inform him, pretty succinctly, that, if
he does much more in this region, he 'll be illustrated with
a coat of tar-and-feathers.”

“Good for you!” said Kite.

“Now,” said Tom, “I understand that to-night he is
going to have a general snivelling season in the old log
church, out on the cross run, and they are going to form
a church on anti-slavery principles. Contemptible whelps!
Not a copper to bless themselves with! Dirty, sweaty,
greasy mechanics, with their spawn of children! Think of
the impudence of their getting together and passing anti-slavery
resolutions, and resolving they won't admit slaveholders

to the communion! I have a great mind to let them
try the dodge, once! By George, if I would n't walk up
and take their bread and wine, and pitch it to thunder!”

“Are they really going to form such a church?”

“That 's the talk,” said Tom. “But they 'll find they
have reckoned without their host, I fancy! You see, I just
tipped Jim Stokes the wink. Says I, Jim, don't you think
they 'll want you to help the music there, to-night? Jim
took at once; and he said he would be on the ground with
a dog or two, and some old tin pans. O, we shall get them
up an orchestra, I promise you! And some of our set are
going over to see the fun. There 's Bill Akers, and Bob
Story, and Sim Dexter, will be over here to dinner, and
towards evening we 'll ride over.”