William Hepworth Dixon, White Conquest: Volume 2

“ [165] no more!” The preacher tries to storm her down. “You go your ways; you go and lib like him; den you see your son again!” The Black Rachel weeps and yells, refusing to be comforted, even by a minister of her own. When the men in uniform seize their shovels and begin to fill the grave, chanting a chorus like that sung by sailors as they haul in ropes, the old woman cries still louder: “No, I nebber see my son, I nebber see my son no more!” Poor soul, she knows the bitterness of her heart.

The younger people laugh and cry by turns, and when the grave is filled in, they scatter into groups, chat with their friends, and get into their coaches and ride away, passing through crowds of Negroes and Mulattaes dressed in blue shawls and pink bonnets, conscious that they make a big sight, and highly pleased that two strange gentlemen are looking on.

Mose Crump is left alone: a little soil above his head, without a stone to mark his grave. His family are also left alone, with little bread and few sweet-potatoes in their pantry, and without the father's labouring hands. The cost of that funeral would have fed the little Crumps for years to come.