Wendell Phillips, Theodore C. Pease, Speeches, Lectures and Letters of Wendell Phillips: Volume 1

[488] who showed him two letters,--one from the French general, offering him any rank if he would put Maitland in his power, and the other his reply. It was, “Sir, I have promised the Englishman that he shall go back.” [Cheers.] Let it stand, therefore, that the negro, truthful as a knight of old, was cheated by his lying foe. Which race has reason to be proud of such a record?

But he was not cheated. He was under espionage. Suppose he had refused: the government would have doubted him,--would have found some cause to arrest him. He probably reasoned thus: “If I go willingly, I shall be treated accordingly” ; and he went. The moment he entered the room, the officers drew their swords, and told him he was prisoner; and one young lieutenant who was present says, “He was not at all surprised, but seemed very sad.” They put him on shipboard, and weighed anchor for France. As the island faded from his sight, he turned to the captain, and said, “You think you have rooted up the tree of liberty, but I am only a branch; I have planted the tree so deep that all France can never root it up.” [Cheers.] Arrived in Paris, he was flung into jail, and Napoleon sent his secretary, Cafiarelli, to him, supposing he had buried large treasures. He listened awhile, then replied, “Young man, it is true I have lost treasures, but they are not such as you come to seek.” He was then sent to the Castle of St. Joux, to a dungeon twelve feet by twenty, built wholly of stone, with a narrow window, high up on the side, looking out on the snows of Switzerland. In winter, ice covers the floor; in summer, it is damp and wet. In this living tomb the child of the sunny tropic was left to die. From this dungeon he wrote two letters to Napoleon. One of them ran thus:--

“ Sire, I am a French citizen. I never broke a law. By the grace of God, I have saved for you the best island of your realm Sire, of your mercy grant me justice.”