Now the original first blasphemer against any institution profoundly venerated by a community is quite sure to be in earnest; his followers and imitators may be humbugs and self-seekers, but he himself is sincere--his heart is in his protest.
Robert Hardy was our first ABOLITIONIST--awful name! He was a journeyman cooper, and worked in the big cooper-shop belonging to the great pork-packing establishment which was Marion City's chief pride and sole source of prosperity.He was a New-Englander, a stranger.And, being a stranger, he was of course regarded as an inferior person--for that has been human nature from Adam down--and of course, also, he was made to feel unwelcome, for this is the ancient law with man and the other animals.Hardy was thirty years old, and a bachelor; pale, given to reverie and reading.He was reserved, and seemed to prefer the isolation which had fallen to his lot.He was treated to many side remarks by his fellows, but as he did not resent them it was decided that he was a coward.
All of a sudden he proclaimed himself an abolitionist--straight out and publicly! He said that negro slavery was a crime, an infamy.For a moment the town was paralyzed with astonishment; then it broke into a fury of rage and swarmed toward the cooper-shop to lynch Hardy.But the Methodist minister made a powerful speech to them and stayed their hands.
He proved to them that Hardy was insane and not responsible for his words; that no man COULD be sane and utter such words.
So Hardy was saved.Being insane, he was allowed to go on talking.He was found to be good entertainment.Several nights running he made abolition speeches in the open air, and all the town flocked to hear and laugh.He implored them to believe him sane and sincere, and have pity on the poor slaves, and take measurements for the restoration of their stolen rights, or in no long time blood would flow--blood, blood, rivers of blood!
It was great fun.But all of a sudden the aspect of things changed.A slave came flying from Palmyra, the county-seat, a few miles back, and was about to escape in a canoe to Illinois and ******* in the dull twilight of the approaching dawn, when the town constable seized him.Hardy happened along and tried to rescue the negro; there was a struggle, and the constable did not come out of it alive.Hardly crossed the river with the negro, and then came back to give himself up.All this took time, for the Mississippi is not a French brook, like the Seine, the Loire, and those other rivulets, but is a real river nearly a mile wide.
The town was on hand in force by now, but the Methodist preacher and the sheriff had already made arrangements in the interest of order; so Hardy was surrounded by a strong guard and safely conveyed to the village calaboose in spite of all the effort of the mob to get hold of him.The reader will have begun to perceive that this Methodist minister was a prompt man; a prompt man, with active hands and a good headpiece.Williams was his name--Damon Williams; Damon Williams in public, Damnation Williams in private, because he was so powerful on that theme and so frequent.
The excitement was prodigious.The constable was the first man who had ever been killed in the town.The event was by long odds the most imposing in the town's history.It lifted the humble village into sudden importance; its name was in everybody's mouth for twenty miles around.And so was the name of Robert Hardy--Robert Hardy, the stranger, the despised.In a day he was become the person of most consequence in the region, the only person talked about.As to those other coopers, they found their position curiously changed--they were important people, or unimportant, now, in proportion as to how large or how small had been their intercourse with the new celebrity.The two or three who had really been on a sort of familiar footing with him found themselves objects of admiring interest with the public and of envy with their shopmates.
The village weekly journal had lately gone into new hands.
The new man was an enterprising fellow, and he made the most of the tragedy.He issued an extra.Then he put up posters promising to devote his whole paper to matters connected with the great event--there would be a full and intensely interesting biography of the murderer, and even a portrait of him.He was as good as his word.He carved the portrait himself, on the back of a wooden type--and a terror it was to look at.It made a great commotion, for this was the first time the village paper had ever contained a picture.The village was very proud.The output of the paper was ten times as great as it had ever been before, yet every copy was sold.
When the trial came on, people came from all the farms around, and from Hannibal, and Quincy, and even from Keokuk; and the court-house could hold only a fraction of the crowd that applied for admission.The trial was published in the village paper, with fresh and still more trying pictures of the accused.
Hardy was convicted, and hanged--a mistake.People came from miles around to see the hanging; they brought cakes and cider, also the women and children, and made a picnic of the matter.It was the largest crowd the village had ever seen.The rope that hanged Hardy was eagerly bought up, in inch samples, for everybody wanted a memento of the memorable event.
Martyrdom gilded with notoriety has its fascinations.