It so happened that he arrived when not expected; and, finding his
overseer absent, and many of the hands not as closely engaged as he
wished, he became violently enraged. Summoning the overseer, he ordered
all hands in front of the house to witness a punishment, and causing
eight or ten of those whom he pointed out to be tied up at once and well
whipped, stood by the while in uncontrollable anger to give directions.
In the midst of the scene, and while urging greater severity, he was
seized with a fit of apoplexy, which was of such a nature, that it at
once closed his career, and he died instantaneously. Directly the man
fell, the negroes collected round him and uttered cries and
lamentations, and the poor wretch who was at the moment the victim of
his brutality, on being untied, which was immediately done, joined in
it. Notwithstanding that my companion had a decided leaning towards the
extinction of slavery, (although he started various objections to its
abolition,) I was quite inclined to believe his relation, having, when
in Florida, met with a somewhat similar instance of the devotedness of
the negro race, in an old woman who was bitterly bewailing the loss of
her deceased mistress.
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