Down below in the city, at the corner of Clay and Farmer Streets, last year they burned a Negro to death, suspending him from a tree over a slow fire. According to the evening paper, “The flesh on the body began to crinkle and blister. The face of the Negro became horribly distorted with pain. He assumed an attitude of prayer, raising his palms together.” When the victim was dead the leader of the mob cried out: “Have you had enough fun, boys?” And they cut him down. That Negro is with John Brown and the repentant thief and many another such, in Paradise. But those who did the deed are damned. The Negroes have been fleeing from Vicksburg ever since this terrible day. But the dead of the old war remain in these great cemeteries. Something has been effected: the children of the slaves are become free, but the children of those who used to be masters still take a Negro now and then and burn him to death. I sat on a pyramid of lawn and looked down to the river. There was a din of sawmills. The Memphis train went howling past, and then with a petty rush on the road below an electric trolley car from Vicksburg. The world went on in seeming peace. A throng of Negro workmen holding on to one another came singing along the way. They were not slaves, anyway. They had life, the beginnings of new life. Though fraught with grave dangers, impeded by prejudice and hate and a thousand difficulties—nevertheless it was new life that they had. And those who died to give it them lie in these quiet graves while the river of life goes past. They did not mean that the gift of freedom should be tarnished. Most of them would be ready to die again to complete the gift they gave. And John Brown himself if he should reappear would not be sweetened by what he saw happening in the world. His soul goes marching on, but it is still the soul of vengeance and wrath. FOOTNOTES: [1] Best men, 18-25 $1,200-$1,300 Fair men 950- 1,050 Boys 375- 950 Young women 800- 1,000 Girls, 5 ft. 750- 850 ” 4 ft. 9 ins. 700- 750 ” 4 ft. 350- 450 —“A Journey Through the Seaboard Slave States,” by F. L. Olmsted. [2] “Two Years on a Georgian Plantation,” by Frances Kemble. [3] “Sherman’s Memoirs.” [4] Field Orders 119 and 120, abbreviated. [5] “Negro Migration in 1916-17,” Government Printing Office, Washington, 1919. TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE: —Obvious print and punctuation errors were corrected. End of Project Gutenberg's The Soul of John Brown, by Stephen Graham