Quigley and his slave never used the children for any nefarious purposes. They were not unscrupulous at all. When it was necessary to satisfy their manly needs they went to the auction rooms. No, not to auction their children. Those were going to be sold directly to specific customers at the plantations that had placed previous orders. Each child was earmarked for a specific owner even as she was being captured or lured by the two. Quigley and his slave went to the auction rooms to rent women for the night. Slave dealers who were entrusted with girls to sell at the auction earned some extra money by hiring the girls out for the night. Whenever Quigley heard a new batch of female slaves had arrived he whispered in his slave’s ear, “Let’s go get some fresh pussy from the auction rooms.” And they tittered like two naughty schoolboys.
So, the children in their care were never in any danger of being used for the gratification of the two kindly gentlemen who were taking them for wonderful jobs with kind-hearted employers. Through most of the journey they sang happy songs and dreamed beautiful dreams. They were happy to have Quigley’s slave at their beck and call, for they did not know that soon they would themselves be slaves and would be used for the pleasure of their new masters.
Sometimes there were women among the children. Irish and German women who had had enough of destitution and were quite willing to walk into servitude and even slavery with their eyes open. Most of these were sold to rich Negroes who kept white slaves. In Virginia and Maryland there were a number of free blacks who were quite wealthy and were slave owners. Some of these were happy to keep white women both as slaves and concubines. It was a better life for the women than the cold and hunger at Five Points, and Quigley was always ready to rescue them from that life and transport them to the South. Some of the women — denounced as depraved by white society — ended up marrying their black masters.
Things were looking up for Quigley and he wondered why he had wasted so many precious months begging with his performing Negro instead of engaging in such a lucrative business. At ten dollars cash per slave, and the cost of transporting it, he was making a killing. Even his slave seemed to be gaining more flesh on his bones. But alas, Quigley couldn’t stay away from the gaming dens. The wealthier he became the more he stayed for nights on end losing money, and then staying for more hours hoping to recoup his losses. His slave was always by his side, still on his leash, or sometimes in chains in order to emphasize to the onlookers that the fellow was a slave and he was indeed the master. This enhanced his status. Or so he thought.
Sometimes he won a few dollars but most times he lost everything he had in his purse that night at the roll of a die. The gambling binges became frequent and he began to neglect the business. This worried the slave and he tried to talk to his master about it. But Quigley was too stubborn to listen to a mere slave. He made the money through his brilliant ideas; he had the right to enjoy it. The fountain would never run dry as long as indigent women continued to manufacture babies.
They had moved from the church basement to one of the tenements, and sometimes Quigley forgot to pay the rent. The landlord would come knocking and threatening to evict them without notice. The slave, who had taken to hiding some of the money under his own mattress, would pay the rent. Quigley would then ransack the house for more hidden money, which he would promptly take to the gaming dens.
That was how Niall Quigley and his slave fell on hard times. Creditors took everything he owned, including his precious wagon and horses that he used to transport slaves to the South. With only his clothes wrapped in a bundle Quigley and his slave trekked down South with the hope of finding new ventures in Virginia, perhaps with the assistance of the rich men he used to provide with fresh supplies of slaves. But none of them wanted to know him. Even the wealthy black landowners who had bought one or two white women from him and were now living with them in holy matrimony or blissful concubinage did not want to have anything to do with him. In cities like Richmond and Norfolk he tried to revive the old act of a “performing Negro” but it just didn’t get off the ground. There were no takers, and more often than not property owners drove them away from the sidewalks with whips.
The slave was now sickly and a burden to keep. Quigley tried to sell him. He took him to the auction rooms but the auctioneers would have none of him. Putting a scrawny fellow like that under the hammer would destroy their reputation as auctioneers of quality slaves. In any event no one in his right mind would bid for him. “A scurvied Negro like this ain’t good for nothing,” they said.
“He’s good for breeding,” Quigley insisted. “Like all men of his race he’s more robust in love than any white man.”
At this he displayed his penis, which was quite sizeable.
But the auctioneers and prospective buyers dismissed the whole idea. They didn’t think the children sired by the slave would be big and strong.
“Nobody’s gonna buy me, you ninny. You’re stuck with me,” said the slave with much glee.
There were no takers even when he wanted to exchange the impertinent fellow for a mere bottle of rum.
The concerns of the slave owners about breeding good healthy slaves gave Quigley an idea. He was going to invent a potion that would make slaves breed faster; a fertility drug that would ensure multiple births. He would take his example from nature. If dogs and rabbits could give birth to so many young ones at the same time, why not humans? Right there at the auction rooms he shared the brilliant idea with his slave, who merely laughed it off as the most ridiculous thing he had ever heard.
Quigley was not to be discouraged by the slave’s lack of faith in human credulity. Thus he became a snake-oil salesman, except he didn’t sell any snake-oil but a slave-breeding concoction of his own manufacture. He traveled from plantation to plantation meeting breeders and interesting them in his invention. Its main ingredient was extracted from the most fertile bitches, he told his customers. It was the same chemical substance that made dogs give birth to many puppies at the same time. The white drug was to be mixed with water and given to the females twice a day. In no time they would conceive. Not only would the potion induce multiple births but the period of gestation would be decreased by half. Quigley embellished on the powers of the potion as he went along and as more greedy plantation owners bought it.
Once more signs of health returned to both the man and his slave. Their cheeks began to fill out and their faces gleamed as they walked the countryside, the leashed slave carrying a sack of the powder and following the master. The leash was not to stop the slave from escaping. He had no intention of doing so for it was good enough for him that they shared the spoils. They were malefactors and scallywags of equal standing. The leash, therefore, served a symbolic function. It reminded the slave that he was a slave despite the companionship, and the master that he was the master despite the partnership in crime. The leash also showed the customers that the great inventor of the magic potion was a man of substance and a property owner. The fact that they were walking the countryside instead of riding on steeds was a matter of choice; so he made those who wondered believe.
Alas, the plantation owners discovered to their cost that the Irishman had duped them. They bayed for his blood, but it was too late because he had moved westward in the direction of Kentucky.
A plantation owner in Putnam County did not give up. The owner’s name was David Fairfield of Fairfield Farms. He had returned from carousing in Charleston one evening to find his wife excited about a purchase she had made from a wonderful salesman — a potion that would make their breeding business the most profitable ever. She showed him the white powder for which she had paid a lot of money. The Owner was suspicious at once. Unlike those who had discovered the chicanery months after trying the potion, The Owner was smart enough to know that no such mixture existed anywhere in the world, let alone in Virginia. He set out after the salesman with a posse of three of his trusted mulattos.