“Well,” he resumed, “this shooting and hollering and setting fires and
so on, continued till the hours I named; and when they got through
killing those they wanted to, or could get, the crowd commenced going
away. You could hear them passing out in different directions,
hollering and cursing and cavorting around, and saying what they had
done. They would swear and say that they had got Baconsville all right
now; thought they had killed a sufficient number to prevent nigger-rule
any longer in the county—thought they had put a quietus on nigger-rule
in the county for all time to come. They went on hollering and calling
the names of the men they had killed; and one would say, ‘He don’t
answer,’ and another would say, ‘He’s looking at the moon and don’t
wink his eyes,’ and they went on making sport of the men they had
killed, and cursing all the time.
Then they commenced robbing, and you could hear it all over town.
It looked like they had parted themselves up into squads for that
business. You could hear them go to a man’s store, and burst it open
and go in, all along the streets. They broke open my warehouse,
and destroyed all my books and papers, and tore up the floors and
partitions—well, just ransacked the place entirely. Then they came
here. I had become alarmed at that time, and said to these young men
who were here with me, ‘I think it is best for us not to remain in this
building, I think they will come here.’ Up to that time I was basing an
opinion that they would not come here, upon the part that I had taken
in the whole affair during the day. I felt that it would keep me out of
danger; but then I saw very readily that even General Baker had lost
all control over the men, and I became alarmed, and thought best to
leave the house.
I thought probably they would not interfere with my wife; but if _we_
were found here, they would kill us. Sure enough, I suppose we hadn’t
any more than got out of the house and passed round from the front to
the back side, before we heard the footsteps of them passing up the
front steps. I was then behind the house, and there was a light in
my wife’s bedroom, and I saw one of the men in that room. I didn’t
recognize him, though I heard him very distinctly ask her where I was,
and where Benny was. She told him that she didn’t know where I was;
that I had gone away somewhere. They then commenced ransacking the
house; and they took a couple of shot guns I had here, and carried them
off; and they did use some very abusive words to my wife. That’s the
extent of what occurred here.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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