For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit.
He had a lot of trouble with that one.
Early in the war his slave quarters had been aswirl with rumors that the Yankees had just marched into Limestone County and occupied Athens. Does that mean we're free? Apparently not since the Yankees didn't seem eager to free anybody. They ended up pillaging the town instead. The rumor now was that they were raping slaves. What kind of liberator was this? Then the Emancipation Proclamation came and went and still there wasn't any freedom. Can we leave now? Is someone supposed to come and get us? Tired of waiting, he fled Cowford Plantation with the aide of Maw Possum. Her underground railroad ran up the creeks and bottomlands into Limestone County's interior towards freedom - Strangetown contraband camp.
Strangetown was then a filthy bottomland crowded with tents. Brothers and sisters were sleeping out in the open. Everyone was sick and coughing and wearing masks fashioned from kerchiefs. Typhoid and dysentery were rife. It was nothing short of an open air refugee camp. The Yankees were completely apathetic. Worse yet, they kept everyone under guard in Strangetown so as not to antagonize the very white people on the Hill who kept them as slaves. What the hell? Guster's mistrust of white people deepened.
They weren't completely helpless. There were teachers and missionaries. They seemed sincere, especially Mary Fletcher Wells, who was white and taught him to read and found him 'oh! so bright!' There was also Brother Jessup Floyd, a black preacher from Boston who preached to the freedman in the Sea Islands. He warmed to Brother Floyd and his Christian ministry, but he kept back a devilish secret. With Mrs. Wells, however, he was hesitant. The only white woman he interacted with was Mrs. Zeigler, who was a complete b***h to her slaves. But Mrs. Wells was persistent, and she loved everything she could do for him, and he sensed it.
Things took a bad turn when he was approached by his old master, Mr. Zeigler , who held a rag dramatically to his face as he walked Strangetown contraband camp looking for his fugitive slaves. He had the Yankees apprehend Guster. His arrest was greatly protested by Mrs. Wells, who sought the assistance of other sympathetic whites around her. Only one white man stepped forward in his defense. His name was Abraham Stone.
The rub was that the Emancipation Proclamation only freed slaves in regions in the South in open rebellion against the Union. Since Limestone County was occupied by the Union and rather pacified after a good pillaging, Guster's master argued his property was not beholden to Mr. Lincoln's proclamation. Rather than being consigned to his master, Guster was jailed instead until the case could be decided. He was extraordinarily bitter about this.
Abraham Stone had come to Limestone County from Maryland as a carpetbagger and established a practice on Market Street where he turned a tidy profit from representing drunk Yankee soldiers in civil court. He used to pass the slave markets of the Baltimore every day on the way to his clerkship. They disgusted him. So he gave pro bono legal work to the freedman. When Guster was apprehended and threatened to be dragged back into human bondage, Abraham acted on his moral instincts. He immediately walked to Limestone County courthouse and obtained a stay. The judge agreed.
Abraham Stone felt he had met God's calling in securing the freedom of this one man, Guster Ledbetter. In a sensational case followed by the Yankee press, Mr. Stone was jostled between the civil and military courts until he made the long trek to Washington D.C. by the cars. He waited in a long line of petitioners for six hours at the White House before he was ushered into the presence of Mr. Lincoln. After stating Guster Ledbetter's case, Mr. Lincoln related the parable of the Frog Who Wished for a King and drafted an order declaring the Limestone County subject to the Emancipation Proclamation. When Abraham Stone returned to Limestone County, he was met with cheers in Strangetown. The Darlings of Strangetown were now free!
Guster Ledbetter was released into freedom and he returned to Strangetown to resume his studies with Mrs. Wells. He had placed his trust in Abraham Stone, and in doing so had helped secure the permanent freedom of all the contraband slaves collected around Town Creek. And now that they were free, they had to find out how to move on with life in this world without chains. That was a long road ahead, and one that would last for a hundred years.
Abraham Stone did not live long after. He was shot dead in his home in front of his wife on East Street by a single man in a scarlet robe and hood, who was Adelphon Kuklos. Guster Ledbetter wept at his funeral, like he had wept for his brothers and sisters who had died in the fields. And he recalled the passage from 1 Corinthians, and may have glimpsed some of that One Spirit. And then it would pass, and he would remember that name - Adelphon Kuklos. And then he never wept again.
There was only one white person he had left to trust, and Mary Wells Parker went on to found the Trinity School for freedman with funds she had procured from The Major. She collected her 'oh, so bright!' students from among the freed negroes of Strangetown and taught them to read and to write and to stand proud on their accomplishments. And though Guster Ledbetter had joined the army and had come back and gone out into the County from the racist tumult of Reconstruction Athens, he found it just as bad out there. The Klan was beginning to surge, guided by the invisible hand of Adelphon Kuklos. So he took up his musket that the Yankees let him keep, and practiced with his Colt Walker until he was ready to face them all.
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