Chapter 70 ○70

Ever since Kizzy was born, Kunta and Fiddler would occasionally return to the farm with the big news that there was an island called Haiti on the other side of the sea, and it was said that there were about 36,000 white French people on the island. Slave ships brought a disproportionate number of about half a million slaves from Africa to grow sugar cane, coffee, indigo leaf, and cocoa on huge farms.One night Bell said she heard Massa Waller tell dinner guests that, according to reports, rich white people in Haiti lived like kings and scorned many poor white people who couldn't afford black slaves.

Think of that situation!Who ever heard such absurd things?said the fiddler sarcastically. Hey!Bell laughed as she talked, and went on to say that the host had told his terrified guests about the tangled interbreeding between white men and black women in Haiti for generations, and now almost There have been 28,000 mulattos and brown people.They are often called colored people, and almost all have achieved the freedom granted by their French masters and fathers.Bell said that according to one of the guests, these colored people must find a partner with a lighter complexion in order to make their children completely white in appearance and complexion; They would bribe local officials to state on their papers that their ancestry was Indian or Spanish, or anything other than African.Master Waller found that unbelievable, and deeply regretted that, through the gifts or last words of many white people, a small number of people of color have owned at least one-fifth of the land and land in Haiti. Slaves, and they vacation in France like the rich, send their kids to school in France, and even laugh at the poor whites.Bell's audience was quite happy to hear about the white man's scandal.

The fiddler interjects: If you'd hear me finish what I've heard rich white folks talk about when I play in high places, you'd be laughing.He said the hosts would often nod their heads and discuss how poor white Haitians hated mulattos and brown people.So they kept signing petitions until France finally passed a bill that forbade colored people from walking outside at night, sitting in church on an equal footing with white people, or even wearing clothes of the same material as white people.At the same time, Fiddler said that both whites and colored people would target Haiti's nearly half a million slaves.Kunta said that he was in the town and overheard the white people talking and laughing about the incident as if the black slaves in Haiti had a harder life than here.He said he had also heard that blacks were whipped to death, or even buried alive as punishment, and that pregnant women were often forced to do heavy labor until they had miscarriages.Since Kunta didn't think there was any point in scaring them, he didn't tell them that he'd heard worse things, like a black man's hand being nailed to a wall until he ate his own severed ear; Another toubob woman cut out the tongues of all her slaves; another gagged a black child and left him to starve.

One time in the summer of 1791, Kunta was driving into town, and because of the horrors of the past ten months, he wasn't surprised to hear that Haitian slaves had sparked a wild and bloody riot.Thousands of black slaves slaughtered everywhere, beat with clubs, beheaded white people, gutted children, raped women, set fire to every farm, until northern Haiti was a ruin of ruins, and those white people who survived were desperate Revenge that they tortured, killed, and even skinned every black person they captured.But before the frantic, fanatical black rebellion spread, there were very few surviving whites.By the end of August of that year, the few thousand remaining whites were still hiding or trying to escape the island.

Kunta said he had never seen such anger and fear among the toubob in Spotsylvania.It was as if they feared that riots like that would happen in Virginia too.Fiddler said, About two or three years after you came, you hardly talked to anyone, so I guess you didn't know about it at all.Just at Christmas time, a foreman in Hanovershire, New Wales, beat a young nigger down, and the nigger jumped up and struck him with an axe.But he missed the mark and the other niggers threw themselves on the foreman and beat and beat him till he was half dead until the first nigger came and saved his life.At that time, the foreman ran to rescue soldiers with blood all over his body, and those crazy black slaves captured two other white men, tied them up, beat them continuously, and then a large group of white men came with guns.All the black slaves were hiding in the stalls, so the white people tried to persuade them to come out by talking peacefully to them in a soothing manner, but the black slaves rushed out with buckets and clubs, and the two blacks were killed. shot dead, and both sides suffered heavy casualties.Then they sent troops around and passed some more bills until things calmed down a bit.What happened in Haiti aroused the white people's hidden worries, because they knew as well as we do that a large group of black slaves under their hands would only need a fuse to riot immediately.Once the riots spread, ah!Virginia would have the same carnage as Haiti.The fiddler talked about it with great interest.

Kunta quickly saw the fear in the white man.Whether he was driving around town, or approaching a store near an intersection, or an inn, or a church house, or a place where white people congregated, they scowled whenever they saw a Negro go by.Even his master, who rarely spoke to him except to tell him where he was going, now spoke in a grim tone.In less than a week, Spotsylvania troops have begun patrolling the streets, asking whereabouts and checking travel passes of every black person passing by, and whipping those who behave and look suspicious. people, or imprison them.At a regional masters meeting, they canceled the upcoming Negro annual harvest festival and Negro gatherings between different farms, even if the dance and prayer meeting held on the same farm were sent foreman or other white people. supervision.Bell told the rest of Slave Row: When Master told me about it, I told him that Aunt Sukey and Sister Mandy and I would kneel down and pray to Jesus every Sunday or every chance we got, but he didn't say Have someone watch over us so we can keep praying!

Over the next few nights, when Bell was home alone with Kunta and Kizzy looking for the latest news, she pieced together information from several newspapers that the master thought he had discarded.It would take her almost an hour to read a major story before telling Kunta that some kind of bill of rights had been established Bell hesitated and let out a long sigh.But there are more reports about the recent events in Haiti, most of which they heard from the rumors among the slaves.Bell said that the point of these messages was that the slave rebellion in Haiti was likely to breed ideas and dispositions among blacks who were disaffected with the country so that extreme restrictions and harsh punishments should be enforced.As Bell folded the newspaper and set it aside, she said: It seems to me they can't do anything against us any more than lock us all up.

However, in the following one or two months, the news of the further development of the situation in Haiti has slowly receded like a wave, so the tension in the whole South has gradually loosened the restrictions of white people on black people and eased a little.Harvest had begun, and the white men congratulated each other on the bounty of their cotton fields and the prices they could fetch.The fiddler was invited to play for all-night dances in numerous large houses, so when he returned to the farm during the day, all he wanted to do was sleep.He told Kunta: Look at those masters earning so much cotton money, and then dancing to death!

But the good times didn't last long, and it didn't take long for the whites to try to anger the blacks again.When Kunta drove his owner to the county hall, he began to hear white people talking angrily about the growing trend of anti-slavery associations organized by white traitors not only in the North but also in the South.He hesitated to tell Bell what he had heard, and Bell said she had read the same in the master's paper, and that the whites blamed the rapid growth of such associations on the black Haitian rebellion. I keep telling you there are some good white people out there!exclaimed Bell, in fact, I've heard quite a few white people have been against it ever since the first ship brought you black Africans!Kunta wondered if Bell knew where her grandparents were from, but she kept talking, so he didn't want to ask.Any time there is such a thing in the newspapers, the master always denounces them as enemies of the state.But what matters is that white people who oppose slavery are increasingly speaking out what they feel and think, leaving most masters to wonder if they are doing the right thing.She looked at Kunta and said, especially those who called themselves Christians.

Bell looked at Kunta again with strange eyes.What do you think the master thinks about me and Aunt Sukey and Sister Mandy talking about when Sunday is just singing and praying?I'm closer to the whites, take the Quakers for example, they were against slavery even before the revolution, I mean in Virginia.She continued, and many of them were ranchers with many slaves.But their pastor started preaching that black people are human beings too, and they have the right to be free like everyone else.Do you remember some of the Quaker masters started freeing their niggers, and even helped them escape to the North?The Quaker masters who still kept the niggers were being talked about by the other brethren.I heard that if they still don't free the black slaves, they will be excommunicated from the church. That's what we're discussing today!Bell yelled.

Next came the Methodists.I remember reading ten or eleven years ago that a great meeting of Methodists finally agreed that slavery was against the will of God, and that every professed Christian should not have this behavior.Therefore, most of the Methodists and Quakers made a noise to make the church clamor for legislation to free the black slaves.And the Baptists and Presbyterians, where the master and all the Waller families are, seem to have little interest in it, they always believe as they please, and therefore have a clear conscience about owning niggers. Bell was talking about white people who were against slavery, though that was what she had read in the master's newspaper, but Kunta had never heard such an opinion from any toubob.During the spring and summer of 1792, the owner shared a carriage with some of the state's biggest plutocrats, politicians, lawyers and businessmen.Unless something particularly urgent happened, their talk was of the trouble the Negroes had made for them. It has been said that whoever would succeed in mastering a nigger must first understand that their African days among wild beasts in the jungle made them stupid, lazy, and messy, and that those Christians whom God favored It is the duty to teach these creatures discipline, morality, and respect for work, of course by example.While encouragement and rewards were undoubtedly given to those who deserved them, laws and punishments were called upon as the circumstances required. They go on to say that because of the negligence of the white man, the attitude of deceit, slyness, and cunning which is to-day is a natural registered trademark of these lower races.And the chatter and nonsense of the anti-slavery groups and others like it comes only from people who never owned slaves, or tried to run a farm with them, especially in the North.These men could never appreciate that the experience and burden of owning a nigger could strain their patience, heart, spirit, and every nerve to the breaking point. Kunta had heard such lawless nonsense for a long time.To him it was like a Christian litany, so he hardly paid attention to it.But occasionally when he was driving, he had to ask himself why his people didn't kill every toubob they set foot in Africa in the first place.He could never come up with an answer he could accept.