Passing: Resurrection Before the Final Victory Scene

     Once again, I can clearly see that my Rough Drafting was too wordy, even for me!

I had had to swallow down the bile that rose up from my belly, threatening to humiliate me even further before these vile men, and I saw his look, that half smile of pleasure in the pain of another, as t… 

For they must have been damning if he always clutched it to his chest, as he did.

and

While I had not personally written, much less sent, the four copies of this letter to anyone, I did have assurances from many of those men who had listened gravely to my recounting of the Senator’s dealings, and then asked further questions, that they intended, separately and together, to write to all four of these sources, and even others with which I was not sufficiently familiar to try mentioning in my personal game of poker with the Senator, for I must be in full command of every detail. I knew he would be. I knew that even if the men who had promised to send such letters were not able, for various reasons, to be a physical part of our cause by helping to transport or shelter fugitives like myself, as Dr. H. and his wife had done, they did help with money, and letters to many other men of influence, and with by sharing the news and rightness of our cause with others, even beyond the borders of our own nation. Thus, I knew that I could correctly tell the Senator of these letters having been sent, and quite credibly so. And I knew that if I should return into his hands, before I even arrived in Virginia, many more such letters would rain down into the hands of his enemies, for I know understood something that Farmer Brown had told me, back in Shrewsbury. Many of these white men, Abolitionists, were afraid of what I represented, for them. That they saw me as ‘just as white as they were’ meant, for them, that one day, any of their children not lucky enough to have blond hair could potentially be kidnapped and sold as a slave, like myself. I had not wanted to believe this when I first heard it, but now, I understood. And it gave me courage. Mr. Loving, my instinct told me, was sympathetic, if not to my personal cause, at least to the fears of some of those white men that had made them join the Abolitionist cause. His dislike of that Peculiar Institution for which he worked was evident, and he only needed another small push to persuade him to part ways with his own master. Could that be why he had been so careless as to allow himself to be parted with that precious ledger book?

and

I had heard at least one man state his intention to send a letter to each of the following, and so I could say, with confident bravado, that I had already written and sent copies of this letter with instructions, in the event of my capture, for that letter to be sent to major newspapers via trusted reporters, to key Republican Senators, including the famous abolitionist senator, the truly Honorable Senator Charles Sumner, and communicated, with an official notary public seal to the commonwealth of Virginia, attention of the members of the legislature collectively, and the records keeper, individually. Finally, a copy to the New York Life Insurance company, to the attention of the investigations division.

   This is meant to be part of the Final Victory, the real one, but it is so diluted that the momentum I had going in gets lost, and it drags when it should be increasing the tension.  So, more paragraphs have to go, hopefully without losing the understanding of what is going on for the readers?

     Now I see why Diana Gabaldon uses Claire’s ride in that wagon on the way to Fort William to plan out her strategy, so that she doesn’t dilute her fight with Frank’s 5xs great grandfather, Captain Black Jack Randall.

Shira

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Shira Destinie A. Jones, MPhil, MAT, BSCS

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