Welcome to the ten Minute Storyteller. That's me Bill Simpson, your host, narrator and author. We hear at the ten minute Storyteller endeavor to entertain you with tall tales or rendered swiftly and with the utmost empathy. We pledge to pack as much entertainment, emotion, and exploration into the human condition as ten minutes will permit. Many novels on steroids. This week we visit an old Southern plantation, likely one that grows cotton or tobacco. The war for independence has come and gone. The founders have grown fat and happy, but they're slaves, well not so much folks. They don't really like being enslaved, and so occasionally they rise up and fight back. They declare their independence Independence Day. The plantation owner, in all his glory, drives up the long plantation drive beneath a canopy of towering Chinese elms billowing with Spanish moss. Two powerful geldings pull the plush family carriage. The master at the helm beside him sits his tall, slender, well coughed bride, who has never in her life, notwithstanding the crush of childbirth, done a lick of work in the rear. The masters five daughters, ranging in age from eleven to seventeen. They sprawl across the carriage seats, hot and tired and ornery. They are a spoiled lot. They're silly lives, entirely irrelevant affairs. They have just been down the road apiece at ash Lawn Plantation celebrating the nation's independence, a splendid affair with over one hundred guests, dancing and sack races. Pin the tail on the negro, ride the big bull. Negroes like bucking broncos. The sun high, the day hot, everyone a little sunburned and in need of refreshment and a cool bath. Atop the little mountain they see their splendid white plantation house dead ahead. There will be lemonade and chilled tea on the front of verandah. Inside both tubs will be filled with cool water from the spring. Anything less and heads will roll. The Master he considers himself a benign owner of negroes, neither too hard nor too soft. Yes he uses the whip, and yes he uses the irons, and yes he has on occasion lopped off digits, hands and feet, and even entire limbs. If absolute obedience proves challenging, but he is an educated man, a great believer in truth and liberty. Rarely does he demand of his slaves more than twelve hour days in the fields, always offers the Sabbath as a day of rest and reflection, and generally speaking, he expects no labor or Independence Day or on Christmas. Yes, he buys and sells and breaks up families as easily as civilized men trade hogs and steers and horses. But this is only because he does not view the negro as a human being, but rather as another beast of burden. What is that, he asks his wife, pointing to something hanging from one of the Chinese elms up near the head of the drive. I'm not sure, husband, the sun is low and in my eyes I can't see. If I'm not mistaken, it's a man's been hung. Oh no, do you think the overseer had to deal with impertinence on Independence Day? I would hope it would be more than just impertinent wife to hang a negro. Well, perhaps obstinates, or maybe a runaway who's been captured. Whatever the there is no place to hang a man. The overseer and I will have words over this. Unfortunately, these words will not be possible, because it is the overseer Ben Rawlins, a sick, sadistic piece of human excreatment who hangs from a low branch of that Chinese elm. Ben beat the Negroes for wiping their brows under the hot sun. He tied their wrists together, threw them on the ground, and dragged them around behind his horse. If they dared to look him in the eye or offer an opinion, the man's cruelty knew no bounds. Well. Now Ben is dead, whipped raw, and then strung up like a side of lamb. His body sways just a bit in the hot evening breeze. The carriage full of white people, their mouths now hanging open and their jaws down around their knees, pass beneath the overseer and continue on toward the plantation house. No one mutters a word. House slaves stand at their posts on the veranda. Stable slaves wait beside the fountain to help the family out of their carriage and tend to the horses. Garden slaves, hoe and weed field slaves, dozens of them, nearly a hundred, and all sweep out of the fields and woods and close in behind the carriage as the Master drives the geldings around the fountain and stops at the wide stairway leading up to the veranda. Only the Master, frankly is master no more. His days as Master of Little Mountain, as a declarer of independence, are all but over. Over Brandy. He may have called the peculiar institution a hideous undertaking, and more than once he claimed possessing slaves was the height of moral depravity. But this was just drawing room gobbledegook, a touch of intellectual rubbish to make himself feel all neat and cozy and superior. In truth, this founder, in his lifetime bought, sold, and beat well over six hundred Negroes. But no matter for the one hundred and forty two Negro slaves presently living on Little Mountain, today truly is Independence Day. They pull the Master down off the carriage while his women shriek. They push him into the dirt and tear off his fancy white suit and his fancy silly white hat. In his skivies. With his pasty white skin and flaming orange hair, he looks weak, scrawny, exposed, defenseless. The big buck snaps the whip and gives the x master fifty lashes. His thin skin tears open and bleeds with each crack of the whip. They rape the wife first, then the daughters, one by one, oldest to youngest. Any buck who wants to rut is given the opportunity and the pick of the litter. The ex master, in the meantime is given additional doses of his own medicine. They chain him in irons, spread eagle on the ground, and lop off with a hatchet and index finger, a couple of toes, and then a hand at the wrist, and finally a foot well up on the ankle. Due unto others, preaches the biggest bull of all, so black he is almost purple. As you would have them do unto you. They corterize his stumps with a red hot branding iron so he will not bleed to death. They hang him next to the overseer, but they do not hang him so that his neck breaks. They hang him low enough in that Chinese elm that his toes just barely touched the ground, neck stretched to the max. After a lifetime of leisure and hypocrisy, it is important he stay alive for further humiliations, those being the ongoing violations against his womenfolk and the torching of his grand plantation house. They set the evil abode ablaze and burn it to the ground, while the ex master's women, their legs tied open endure both the heat of the burning house and the heat of the liberated bulls. Yes, there will be hell to pay for these insurrectionists, these rapists, these murderers, these enslaved human beings. But not today. Today is Independence Day. Thanks for listening to this original audio presentation of Independence Day. If you enjoy today's story, please take a few seconds to rate, review, and subscribe to this podcast, and then go to Thomas William Simpson dot com for additional information about the author and to view his extensive canon. The Ten Minute Storyteller is produced by Andrew Pleglici and Josh Colodney and as part of the Elvis Duran Podcast Network in partnership with Iheartproductions. Until next time, this is Bill Simpson, your ten Minute Storyteller.

Welcome to the ten Minute Storyteller. That's me Bill Simpson, your host, narrator and author. We hear at the ten minute Storyteller endeavor to entertain you with tall tales or rendered swiftly and with the utmost empathy. We pledge to pack as much entertainment, emotion, and exploration into the human condition as ten minutes will permit. Many novels on steroids. This week we visit an old Southern plantation, likely one that grows cotton or tobacco. The war for independence has come and gone. The founders have grown fat and happy, but they're slaves, well not so much folks. They don't really like being enslaved, and so occasionally they rise up and fight back. They declare their independence Independence Day. The plantation owner, in all his glory, drives up the long plantation drive beneath a canopy of towering Chinese elms billowing with Spanish moss. Two powerful geldings pull the plush family carriage. The master at the helm beside him sits his tall, slender, well coughed bride, who has never in her life, notwithstanding the crush of childbirth, done a lick of work in the rear. The masters five daughters, ranging in age from eleven to seventeen. They sprawl across the carriage seats, hot and tired and ornery. They are a spoiled lot. They're silly lives, entirely irrelevant affairs. They have just been down the road apiece at ash Lawn Plantation celebrating the nation's independence, a splendid affair with over one hundred guests, dancing and sack races. Pin the tail on the negro, ride the big bull. Negroes like bucking broncos. The sun high, the day hot, everyone a little sunburned and in need of refreshment and a cool bath. Atop the little mountain they see their splendid white plantation house dead ahead. There will be lemonade and chilled tea on the front of verandah. Inside both tubs will be filled with cool water from the spring. Anything less and heads will roll. The Master he considers himself a benign owner of negroes, neither too hard nor too soft. Yes he uses the whip, and yes he uses the irons, and yes he has on occasion lopped off digits, hands and feet, and even entire limbs. If absolute obedience proves challenging, but he is an educated man, a great believer in truth and liberty. Rarely does he demand of his slaves more than twelve hour days in the fields, always offers the Sabbath as a day of rest and reflection, and generally speaking, he expects no labor or Independence Day or on Christmas. Yes, he buys and sells and breaks up families as easily as civilized men trade hogs and steers and horses. But this is only because he does not view the negro as a human being, but rather as another beast of burden. What is that, he asks his wife, pointing to something hanging from one of the Chinese elms up near the head of the drive. I'm not sure, husband, the sun is low and in my eyes I can't see. If I'm not mistaken, it's a man's been hung. Oh no, do you think the overseer had to deal with impertinence on Independence Day? I would hope it would be more than just impertinent wife to hang a negro. Well, perhaps obstinates, or maybe a runaway who's been captured. Whatever the there is no place to hang a man. The overseer and I will have words over this. Unfortunately, these words will not be possible, because it is the overseer Ben Rawlins, a sick, sadistic piece of human excreatment who hangs from a low branch of that Chinese elm. Ben beat the Negroes for wiping their brows under the hot sun. He tied their wrists together, threw them on the ground, and dragged them around behind his horse. If they dared to look him in the eye or offer an opinion, the man's cruelty knew no bounds. Well. Now Ben is dead, whipped raw, and then strung up like a side of lamb. His body sways just a bit in the hot evening breeze. The carriage full of white people, their mouths now hanging open and their jaws down around their knees, pass beneath the overseer and continue on toward the plantation house. No one mutters a word. House slaves stand at their posts on the veranda. Stable slaves wait beside the fountain to help the family out of their carriage and tend to the horses. Garden slaves, hoe and weed field slaves, dozens of them, nearly a hundred, and all sweep out of the fields and woods and close in behind the carriage as the Master drives the geldings around the fountain and stops at the wide stairway leading up to the veranda. Only the Master, frankly is master no more. His days as Master of Little Mountain, as a declarer of independence, are all but over. Over Brandy. He may have called the peculiar institution a hideous undertaking, and more than once he claimed possessing slaves was the height of moral depravity. But this was just drawing room gobbledegook, a touch of intellectual rubbish to make himself feel all neat and cozy and superior. In truth, this founder, in his lifetime bought, sold, and beat well over six hundred Negroes. But no matter for the one hundred and forty two Negro slaves presently living on Little Mountain, today truly is Independence Day. They pull the Master down off the carriage while his women shriek. They push him into the dirt and tear off his fancy white suit and his fancy silly white hat. In his skivies. With his pasty white skin and flaming orange hair, he looks weak, scrawny, exposed, defenseless. The big buck snaps the whip and gives the x master fifty lashes. His thin skin tears open and bleeds with each crack of the whip. They rape the wife first, then the daughters, one by one, oldest to youngest. Any buck who wants to rut is given the opportunity and the pick of the litter. The ex master, in the meantime is given additional doses of his own medicine. They chain him in irons, spread eagle on the ground, and lop off with a hatchet and index finger, a couple of toes, and then a hand at the wrist, and finally a foot well up on the ankle. Due unto others, preaches the biggest bull of all, so black he is almost purple. As you would have them do unto you. They corterize his stumps with a red hot branding iron so he will not bleed to death. They hang him next to the overseer, but they do not hang him so that his neck breaks. They hang him low enough in that Chinese elm that his toes just barely touched the ground, neck stretched to the max. After a lifetime of leisure and hypocrisy, it is important he stay alive for further humiliations, those being the ongoing violations against his womenfolk and the torching of his grand plantation house. They set the evil abode ablaze and burn it to the ground, while the ex master's women, their legs tied open endure both the heat of the burning house and the heat of the liberated bulls. Yes, there will be hell to pay for these insurrectionists, these rapists, these murderers, these enslaved human beings. But not today. Today is Independence Day. Thanks for listening to this original audio presentation of Independence Day. If you enjoy today's story, please take a few seconds to rate, review, and subscribe to this podcast, and then go to Thomas William Simpson dot com for additional information about the author and to view his extensive canon. The Ten Minute Storyteller is produced by Andrew Pleglici and Josh Colodney and as part of the Elvis Duran Podcast Network in partnership with Iheartproductions. Until next time, this is Bill Simpson, your ten Minute Storyteller.