Becoming America - An Exploration of American Literature from Precolonial to Post-Revolution, 2018a

BECOMING AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY AND EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD LITERATURE
something of this kind, set a watch to look out. My being known to them obliged
me to use the following deception: I whitened my face that they might not know
me, and this had the desired eect. He did not go out of his house that night, and
next morning I contrived a well-plotted stratagem, notwithstanding he had a
gentleman in his house to personate him. My direction to the tipsta had the
desired eect; he got admittance into the house, and conducted him to a judge
according to the writ. When he came there, his plea was, that he had not the body
in custody, on which he was admitted to bail. I proceeded immediately to that
well-known philanthropist, Granville Sharp, Esq. who received me with the
utmost kindness, and gave me every instruction that was needful on the occasion.
I left him in full hopes that I should gain the unhappy man his liberty, with the
warmest sense of gratitude towards Mr. Sharp for his kindness; but, alas! my
attorney proved unfaithful; he took my money, lost me many months employ, and
did not do the least good in the cause; and when the poor man arrived at St. Kitt’s,
he was, according to custom, staked to the ground with four pins through a cord,
two on his wrists, and two on his ancles, was cut and ogged most unmercifully,
and afterwards loaded cruelly with irons about his neck. I had two very moving
letters from him while he was in this situation; and I made attempts to go after
him at a great hazard, but was sadly disappointed: I also was told of it by some
very respectable families now in London, who saw him in St. Kitt’s in the same
state, in which he remained till kind death released him out of the hands of his
tyrants. During this disagreeable business, I was under strong convictions of sin,
and thought that my state was worse than any man’s; my mind was unaccountable
disturbed; I often wished for death, though, at the same time, convinced I was all
together unprepared for that awful summons: suering much by villains in the
late cause, and being much concerned about the state of my soul, these things (but
particularly the latter) brought me very low; so that I became a burden to myself,
and viewed all things around me as emptiness and vanity, which could give no
satisfaction to a troubled conscience. I was again determined to go to Turkey and
resolved, at that time, never more to return to England. I engaged as steward on
board a Turkeyman the Wester Hall, Capt. Lina), but was prevented by means of
my late captain Mr. Hughes, and others. All this appeared to be against me, and
the only comfort I then experienced was in reading the Holy Scriptures, where I
saw that ‘there is no new thing under the sun,’ Eccles. i. 9. and what was appointed
for me I must submit to. Thus I continued to travel in much heaviness, and frequen
ly murmured against the Almighty, particularly in his providential dealings; and,
awful to think! I began to blaspheme, and wished often to be any thing but a
human being. In these severe conicts the Lord answered me by awful ‘visions of
the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, in slumberings upon the bed,’ Job
xxxiii. 15. He was pleased, in much mercy, to give me to see, and in some measure
understand, the great and awful scene of the Judgement-day, that ‘no unclean
person, no unholy thing, can enter into the kingdom of God,’ Eph. v. 5. I would
then, if it had been possible, have changed my nature with the meanest worm on
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