CHAPTER XLV.
HOW SLAVEHOLDERS FEAR EACH OTHER.
THE reader will please remember that we left Nicholas, maddened to
distraction at the perfidy of which Grabguy makes him the victim,
chained to an iron ring in the centre of Graspum's slave pen. In
addition to this very popular mode of subduing souls that love
liberty, his wife and children are sold from him, the ekings of his
toil, so carefully laid up as the boon of his freedom, are
confiscated, and the wrong-doer now seeks to cover his character by
proclaiming to a public without sympathy that no such convention
existed, no such object entertained. Grabguy is a man of position,
and lady Grabguy moves well in society no way vulgar; but the slave
(the more honourable of the two) hath no voice-he is nothing in the
democratic world. Of his origin he knows not; and yet the sting
pierces deeper into his burning heart, as he feels that, would
justice but listen to his tale, freedom had not been a stranger. No
voice in law, no common right of commoners, no power to appeal to
the judiciary of his own country, hath he. Overpowered, chained, his
very soul tortured with the lash, he still proclaims his
resolution-"death or justice!" He will no longer work for him who
has stripped away his rights, and while affecting honesty, would
crush him bleeding into the earth.
Grabguy will counsel an expedient wherewith further to conceal his
perfidy; and to that end, with seeming honesty lady Grabguy would
have her fashionable neighbours believe sincere, he will ship the
oppressed man to New Orleans, there to be sold.
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