Page:Sketchesinhistory00pett.pdf/71

Rh equality, nigger voting, and marrying niggers, of course that will come next. I would like to know liow a son of your father was ever turned over in this way.”

“Well,” said the Captain, “I can tell you how I was converted, though I don't understand how your talk about ‘niggers’ as you call them, has anything to do with the flavor of my fruit, or with this question of maintaining our government when rebels are trying to destroy it; but seeing you want to know what’s the matter with me, I’ll tell you. It is true, as you say, my father was a Democrat, and perhaps he supposed that to hate a negro and to be a Democrat was all one thing,—can’t say as to that, never heard him say much on the subject, though I remember a feeling of that sort seemed to be common. When I was a boy I wanted to go sailing on the lake, so father put me in care of Captain Perkins, and I became a sailor. By the time I was twentytwo years of age I was in command of a vessel on Lake Erie. We stopped at Cleveland one night, and the wind being high, we anchored in the harbor, but about daybreak the wind fell away and we started for Buffalo. When about three miles out, a boat with four men in it put off from the shore and came towards us with a white flag flying, so we hove to until the boat came alongside. Two of the men were merchants in Cleveland, with whom I was well acquainted—had done business with them the day before ; one of them threw on board a purse, containing about $15 in silver, and said, ‘Land these two men in Canada, take your pay out of that and give them what is left.’ The two men came aboard and the boat returned.

“The men thrown upon my hands were very black, coarse in feature and build, stupid in expression, and apparently incapable of any mental excitement except fear. They were frightened out of their wits if they ever