Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/877

 we went up into his room where he was bound, with the undoubted and undisguised purpose of taking his life. At the door we were stopped by persons guarding the door, who remonstrated with us, and the excitement was so great that persons who remonstrated with us one moment, would cheer us. on the next. We bursted into the room where he was, and found several around him, but they offered only a feeble resistance; we brought our guns down to his head repeatedly, myself and another person, for the purpose of shooting him in the room.

"There was a young lady there, the sister of Mr. Fouke, the hotel keeper, who sat in the man's lap and covered his face with her arms, and shielded him whenever we brought our guns to bear. She said to us, 'For God's sake wait, and let the law take its course.' My associate shouted to kill him; 'Let us take his blood!' were his words. All around were shouting, 'Mr. Bickham's life was worth ten thousand of these vile abolitionists.' I was cool about it, and deliberate; my gun was pushed up by some one who seized the barrel, and I then moved to the back part of the room, still with purpose unchanged, but with a view to direct attention from me, in order to get an opportunity, at some moment when the crowd would be less dense, to shoot him. After a moment's thought, it occurred to me that that was not the proper place to kill him. We then proposed to take him out and hang him. Some persons of our band then opened the way to him, and first pushing Miss Fouke aside, we slung him out of doors. I gave him a push and many others did the same. We then shoved him along the platform and down to the tressle work of the bridge, he begging for his life all the time, very piteously at first.

"By the way, before we took him out of the room, I asked the question what he came here for; he said their only purpose was to free the slaves—that he came there to free the slaves, or die. Then he begged, "Don't take my life—a prisoner,' but I put the gun to him, and he said, 'You may kill me, but it will be revenged; there are 80,000 persons sworn to carry on this work.' That was his last expression. We bore him out on the bridge with the purpose then of hanging him; we had no rope, and none could be found; it was a moment of wild excitement. Two of us raised our guns—which one was first I do not know—and pulled the triggers. Before he reached the ground, I suppose some five or six shots had been fired into his body. He fell to the railroad track, his back down to the earth, and his face up. We then went back for the purpose of getting another one (Stephens), but he was sick, or wounded, and persons around him, and I persuaded them myself to let him alone. I said, 'Don't let us operate on him, but go round and get some more.' We did this act with a purpose, thinking it right and justifiable under the circumstances, and fired and excited by the cowardly, savage manner in which Mr. Bickham's life had been taken.".

Soon after the capture of Brown and his companions, a company proceeded to the farm he had rented, and examined the premises. The school-house