Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [159]
“Dat de only thing good I ever heared ’bout neither one a dem!” said the fiddler.
As much as he hated slavery, it seemed to Kunta that no good could come of the white folks giving guns to blacks. First of all, the whites would always have more guns than the blacks, so any attempt to revolt would end in defeat And he thought about how in his own homeland, guns and bullets had been given by the toubob to evil chiefs and kings, until blacks were fighting blacks, village against village, and selling those they conquered—their own people—into chains.
Once Bell heard the massa say that as many as five thousand blacks, both free and slave, were in the fighting that was going on, and Luther regularly brought stories of blacks fighting and dying alongside their massas. Luther also told of some all-black companies from “up Nawth,” even one all-black battalion called “The Bucks of America.” “Even dey colonel is a nigger,” said Luther. “His name Middleton.” He looked archly at the fiddler. “You won’t never guess what he is!”
“What you mean?” said the fiddler.
“He a fiddler, too! An’ it’s time to do some fiddlin’!”
Then Luther hummed and sang a new song he had heard in the county seat. The catchiness of it was easy to pick up, and soon others were singing it, and still others beating time with sticks. “Yankee Doodle came to town, ridin’ on a pony. . . .” And when the fiddler started playing, the slave row young’uns began to dance and clap their hands.
With May of 1781 came the astounding story that redcoats on horses had ruined Massa Thomas Jefferson’s plantation called Monticello. The crops had been destroyed, the barn burned, the livestock run off, and all the horses and thirty slaves had been taken. “White folks sayin’ Virginia got to be saved,” Luther reported, and soon after he told of white joy because General Washington’s army was headed there. “An’ niggers a plenty is in it!” October brought reports that the combined forces of Washington and Lafayette had poured shot and shell into Yorktown, attacking England’s Cornwallis. And they soon learned of other battles raging in Virginia, New York, North Carolina, Maryland, and other states. Then in the third week of the month came the news that set even slave row shouting: “Cornwallis done surrendered! War am ober! Freedom am won!”
Luther barely had time to sleep between buggy journeys now, and the massa was even smiling again—for the first time in years, said Bell.
“Ev’ywhere I’s been, de niggers is hollerin’ loud as white folks,” said Luther.
But he said that slaves everywhere had rejoiced most over their special hero, “Ol’ Billy” Flora, who had recently been discharged and carried his faithful musket back to Norfolk.
“Y’all come here!” Bell shouted, summoning the others on slave row not long after. “Massa jes’ tol’ me dey done named that Philadelphia firs’ capital of Newnited States!” But it was Luther who told them later, “Massa Jefferson done put up some kin’ of Manumission Ack. It say massas got de right to free niggers, but tell me dem Quakers an’ antislavery folks an’ free niggers up Nawth is hollerin’ an’ goin’ on ’cause the Ack say massas don’t have to, not less’n dey wants to.”
When General Washington disbanded the army early in November of 1783, formally ending what most people had begun calling “The Seven Years’ War,” Bell told everyone in slave row, “Massa say gon’ be peace now.”
“Ain’t gon’ be no peace, not long as it’s white folks,” said the fiddler sourly, “’cause ain’t nothin’ dey loves better’n killin’.” His glance flicked among the faces around him. “Jes’ watch what I tell you—it’s gon’ be worse’n it was for us niggers.”
Kunta and the old gardener sat later talking quietly. “You seen aplenty since you been here. How long it’s been, anyhow?” Kunta didn’t know, and that troubled him.
That night, when he was alone, Kunta spent hours