CHAPTER VII

THE RETURN

The time of waiting had been an anxious one. The Meahers realized the risk. There had always been some, but during the absence of the _Clotilde_ great agitation had become rife throughout the country, and one of the things the Government had at last undertaken to do was to wipe out at once and forever the illegal traffic in slaves. The destination and purpose of the _Clotilde_ had been noised about, and Meaher realized that officials were watching his movements. Aside from the _Clotilde’s_ capture, he had little to fear, for every vestige of the conservatism which had so long held in restraint the abolitionism of the North and the temper of the South had disappeared; the two sections had drifted so far apart as to be virtually two countries; war clouds were looming large upon the horizon and differences had gone so far there could be no reconciliation. Garrison’s voice was ringing through the North characterizing Southerners as “thieves and robbers, men-stealers, and women-whippers” and calling loudly, “how can two walk together, except they agree? The slaveholder with his hands dripping in blood--will I make a compact with him? The man who plunders cradles--will I say to him ‘Brother, let us walk together in unity?’ The man who to gratify his lust or his anger, scourges women with the lash till the soil is red with blood--will I say to him, ‘Give me your hand; let us form a glorious union?’” Charges which were as a scourge to Southerners; goaded and angered, many began to talk of reopening the slave traffic. The question was agitated in Congress--a number of papers advocating it, not all of which were of the South. The New York _Day Book_, May 17, 1859, came out strongly for it. “Of course no one can suppose we doubt the right of bringing negroes from Africa if they are needed. It is simply a question of expediency, and there can be no doubt our laws making it piracy must be blotted out of the Statute Books. They are not only ridiculous, but utterly and wholly contemptible,” etc. From the point of view of a large class of Southerners these arguments were not fallacious. Yet they were retrogressive and their revival put the South out of harmony with ethical and intellectual progress, and defeated the hopes of those of larger vision. Early in 1859 the Mobile papers lent their support to the question. Mobilians, like all of the South, were tried to their utmost, and Meaher knew if all due secrecy was observed, he had little to fear from them.

Captain Foster reached Mobile on a Sunday morning in August (1859) with the secret that the _Clotilde_ lay behind the islands in Mississippi Sound. Arrangements had long been made that a tug should lie in readiness to go at a moment’s notice down Mobile Bay to tow the _Clotilde_ and her cargo to safety. When the news came, the tug’s pilot was attending service at St. John’s Church. Captain Jim Meaher and James Dennison--a negro slave--hurried to the church. Dennison remained outside while Meaher went in to call the pilot. The three hastened down to the wharf, and were soon aboard the tug _Billy Jones_, steaming rapidly down the bay. Late afternoon found them nearing the _Clotilde_, but they waited for the darkness. The most dangerous part of the adventure was still ahead--the trip up Mobile Bay. At the mouth the marshes and islands offered protection; if they could once reach the delta of the Mobile River, with its desolate stretches of marsh, its deep rivers and intricate bayous, safety was almost assured. But the bay lay smilingly open between two long arms of land. Her wonderful beauty under the gorgeous August sunset was lost upon the watchers; they prayed for the light to fade and for mysterious night with its enshrouding darkness. At last as if loath to die, the color was gone; sea and sky melted together into almost impenetrable grayness. They ceased their vigils and fell to a quick activity; lines were thrown, the _Clotilde_ made fast, and the trip up the bay was begun. Her wooded shores had echoed the voices of many peoples and the sounds from many craft, but never any more epoch-making--those from the last slave ship--the voyage nearing its finish which ended forever among Anglo-Saxon people the darkest blot upon their civilization. The chugging sound of the tug’s machinery filled the Tarkars with terrified wonder; at last they concluded that it was the swarming of bees.

Time was precious and the darkness doubly so; much was still to be done before day with its light should come. These hours might mean life or death. The trip up the bay was safely made. The tug avoided the Mobile River channel, slipped behind the light-house on Battery Gladden, into Spanish River. This lay in the midst of the marsh and with its circuitous windings was not more than ten miles long. As the _Clotilde_ passed opposite Mobile the clock in the old Spanish tower struck eleven, and the watchman’s voice floated over the city and across the marshes, “Eleven o’clock and all’s well.”

The _Clotilde_ was taken directly to Twelve-Mile Island--a lonely, weird place by night. There the _R. B. Tainey_[21] waited; lights were smothered, and in the darkness quickly and quietly the _Clotilde’s_ cargo of one hundred and sixteen negroes was transferred to the steamboat, taken up the Alabama River to John Dabney’s plantation below Mount Vernon and not far from the shadow of the fort, where they were landed before noon of the next day.

[Illustration: Drawn by Emma Roche.

Kazoola.]

At Twelve-Mile Island the crew of Northern sailors again mutinied. Captain Foster, with a six shooter in each hand, went among them, discharged them, and ordered them to “hit the grit and never be seen in Southern waters again.” They were placed aboard the tug. Meaher bought tickets and saw that they boarded a train for the North. The _Clotilde_ was scuttled and fired, Captain Foster himself placed seven cords of light wood upon her. Her hull still lies in the marsh at the mouth of Bayou Corne and may be seen at low tide. Foster afterwards regretted her destruction as she was worth more than the ten Africans given him by the Meahers as his booty.