Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [158]
“What do it mean?” a field hand asked, and the fiddler replied, “Uprise, an’ white folks won’t call no preacher when dey kills you!”
Luther heard that some white folks called “Tories,” and some other kind called “Scotchmen,” were joining with the English. “An’ sheriff’s nigger tol’ me dat Lord Dunmore’s ruinin’ river plantations, burnin’ big houses, an’ tellin’ de niggers he free ’em if’n dey come on an’ jine ’im.” Luther told how in Yorktown and other towns, any blacks caught out at night were being whipped and jailed.
Christmas that year was but a word. Lord Dunmore was reported to have barely outraced a mob onto the safety of his flag-ship. And a week later came the incredible news that Dunmore, with his fleet off Norfolk, had ordered the city emptied within one hour. Then his guns began a bombardment that set raging fires, and much of Norfolk had been reduced to ashes. In what was left, Bell reported, water and food were scarce, and fever had broken out, killing so many that Hampton Roads’ waters were dotted with bloated bodies drifting ashore with the tides. “Say dey’s buryin’ ’em in san’ an’ mud,” said Luther. “An’ lotta niggers near ’bout starvin’ an’ scared to death on dem English boats.”
Mulling over all these terrible events, Kunta felt that in some unfathomable way, all of this suffering must have some meaning, some reason, that Allah must have willed it. Whatever was going to happen next, both to black and white, must be His design.
It was early in 1776 when Kunta and the others heard that a General Cornwallis had come from England with boatfuls of sailors and soldiers trying to cross a big “York River,” but a great storm had scattered the boats. They heard next that another Continental Congress had met, with a group of massas from Virginia moving for complete separation from the English. Then two months of minor news passed before Luther returned from the county seat with the news that after another meeting on July 4, “All the white folks I seen is jes’ carryin’ on! Somethin’ ’bout some Decoration a Ind’pen’ence. Heared ’em say Massa John Hancock done writ his name real big so the king wouldn’t have to strain none to see it.”
On his next trips to the county seat, Luther returned with accounts he had heard that in Baltimore, a life-sized rag doll “king” had been carted through the streets, then thrown into a bonfire surrounded by white people shouting “Tyrant! Tyrant!” And in Richmond, rifles had been fired in volleys as shouting white people waved their torches and drank toasts to each other. Along the subdued slave row, the old gardener said, “Ain’t nothin’ neither way for niggers to holler ’bout. England or here, dey’s all white folks.”
Later that summer, Bell bustled over to slave row with news from a dinner guest that the House of Burgesses had just recently passed an act that “say dey gon’ take niggers in the Army as drummers, fifers, or pioneers.”
“What’s pioneers?” asked a field hand.
“It mean git stuck up front an’ git kilt!” said the fiddler.
Luther soon brought home an exciting account of a big battle right there in Virginia that had slaves fighting on both sides. Amid a hail of musket balls from hundreds of redcoats and Tories, along with a group of convicts and blacks, a smaller force of white “Colonials” and their blacks were driven across a bridge, but in the rear a slave soldier named Billy Flora had ripped up and hurled away enough planks from the bridge that the English forces had to stop and withdraw, saving the day for the Colonial forces.
“Rip up a bridge! Dat musta been some strong nigger!” the gardener exclaimed.
When the French entered the war on the Colonial side in 1778, Bell relayed reports that