The Project Gutenberg EBook of An Arkansas Planter, by Opie Percival Read

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Title: An Arkansas Planter

Author: Opie Percival Read

Release Date: August 23, 2006 [EBook #19107]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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An Arkansas Planter

BY

OPIE READ,

AUTHOR OF

"A Yankee from the West,"
"The Waters of Caney Fork,"
"Mrs. Annie Green,"
"Up Terrapin River."

CHICAGO AND NEW YORK:
RAND, McNALLY & COMPANY,
PUBLISHERS.

AN ARKANSAS PLANTER.

CHAPTER I.

Lying along the Arkansas River, a few miles below Little Rock, there is
a broad strip of country that was once the domain of a lordly race of
men. They were not lordly in the sense of conquest; no rusting armor
hung upon their walls; no ancient blood-stains blotched their
stairways--there were no skeletons in dungeons deep beneath the banquet
hall. But in their own opinion they were just as great as if they had
possessed these gracious marks of medieval distinction. Their country
was comparatively new, but their fathers came mostly from Virginia and
their whisky came wholly from Kentucky. Their cotton brought a high
price in the Liverpool market, their daughters were celebrated for
beauty, and their sons could hold their own with the poker players that
traveled up and down the Mississippi River. The slave trade had been
abolished, and, therefore, what remained of slavery was right; and in
proof of it the pulpit contributed its argument. Negro preachers with
wives scattered throughout the community urged their fellow bondsmen to
drop upon their knees and thank God for the privilege of following a
mule in a Christian land. The merciless work of driving the negroes to
their tasks was performed by men from the North. Many a son of New
England, who, with emotion, had listened to Phillips and to Garrison,
had afterward hired his harsh energies