ed likely to get the better of the brute, but he finally overpowered
her, and succeeded in getting his rope around her arms, and in firmly
tying her to the tree, at which he had been aiming. This done, and Nelly
was at the mercy of his merciless lash; and now, what followed, I have
no heart to describe. The cowardly creature made good his every threat;
and wielded the lash with all the hot zest of furious revenge. The cries
of the woman, while undergoing the terrible infliction, were mingled
with those of the children, sounds which I hope the reader may never be
called upon to hear. When Nelly was untied, her back was covered
with blood. The red stripes were all over her shoulders. She was
whipped--severely whipped; but she was not subdued, for she continued to
denounce the overseer, and to call him every vile name. He had bruised
her flesh, but had left her invincible spirit undaunted. Such floggings
are seldom repeated by the same overseer. They prefer to whip those{74}
who are most easily whipped. The old doctrine that submission is the
very best cure for outrage and wrong, does not hold good on the slave
plantation. He is whipped oftenest, who is whipped easiest; and that
slave who has the courage to stand up for himself against the overseer,
although he may have many hard stripes at the first, becomes, in the
end, a freeman, even though he sustain the formal relation of a slave.
"You can shoot me but you can't whip me," said a slave to Rigby Hopkins;
and the result was that he was neither whipped nor shot. If the latter
had been his fate, it would have been less deplorable than the living
and lingering death to which cowardly and slavish souls are subjected.
I do not know that Mr. Sevier ever undertook to whip Nelly again. He
probably never did, for it was not long after his attempt to subdue her,
that he was taken sick, and died. The wretched man died as he had lived,
unrepentant; and it was said--with how much truth I know not--that in
the very last hours of his life, his ruling passion showed itself,
and that when wrestling with death, he was uttering horrid oaths, and
flourishing the cowskin, as though he was tearing the flesh off some
helpless slave. One thing is certain, that when he was in health, it was
enough to chill the blood, and to stiffen the hair of an ordinary man,
to hear Mr. Sevier talk. Nature, or his cruel habits, had given to
his face an expression of unusual savageness, even for a slave-driver.