Osceola, the Indian-
Negro chieftain, had risen in the swamps of Florida, vowing
vengeance. His war-cry reached the red Creeks of Dougherty,
and their war-cry rang from the Chattahoochee to the sea.
Men and women and children fled and fell before them as
they swept into Dougherty. In yonder shadows a dark and
hideously painted warrior glided stealthily on,--another and
another, until three hundred had crept into the treacherous
swamp. Then the false slime closing about them called the
white men from the east. Waist-deep, they fought beneath the
tall trees, until the war-cry was hushed and the Indians glided
back into the west. Small wonder the wood is red.
Then came the black slaves. Day after day the clank of
chained feet marching from Virginia and Carolina to Georgia
was heard in these rich swamp lands. Day after day the songs
of the callous, the wail of the motherless, and the muttered
curses of the wretched echoed from the Flint to the Chickasaw-
hatchee, until by 1860 there had risen in West Dougherty
perhaps the richest slave kingdom the modern world ever
knew. A hundred and fifty barons commanded the labor of
nearly six thousand Negroes, held sway over farms with
ninety thousand acres tilled land, valued even in times of
cheap soil at three millions of dollars.
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