He even held
the Judge's note for several hundred dollars.
The colonel waited at the station for the train back to Clarendon.
When it came, it brought a gang of convicts, consigned to Fetters.
They had been brought down in the regular "Jim Crow" car, for the
colonel saw coloured women and children come out ahead of them. The
colonel watched the wretches, in coarse striped garments, with chains
on their legs and shackles on their hands, unloaded from the train and
into the waiting wagons. There were burly Negroes and flat-shanked,
scrawny Negroes. Some wore the ashen hue of long confinement. Some
were shamefaced, some reckless, some sullen. A few white convicts
among them seemed doubly ashamed--both of their condition and of their
company; they kept together as much as they were permitted, and looked
with contempt at their black companions in misfortune. Fetters's man
and Haines, armed with whips, and with pistols in their belts, were
present to oversee the unloading, and the colonel could see them point
him out to the State officers who had come in charge of the convicts,
and see them look at him with curious looks. The scene was not
edifying. There were criminals in New York, he knew very well, but he
had never seen one. They were not marched down Broadway in stripes and
chains. There were certain functions of society, as of the body, which
were more decently performed in retirement. There was work in the
State for the social reformer, and the colonel, undismayed by his
temporary defeat, metaphorically girded up his loins, went home, and,
still metaphorically, set out to put a spoke in Fetters's wheel.
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