They used 3 horses and 7 dogs to transport a 2.31-meter-tall slave, but 10 hours later… | HO

PART I — THE PURCHASE
The Announcement That Terrified Even Louisiana’s Cruelest Men

On April 12th, 1859, as the first blistering winds of summer began to creep across the Louisiana lowlands, Bogard Whitmore—planter, gambler, and newly inducted member of the most secretive brotherhood in St. Mary Parish—made a public announcement that stunned even his own kind.

He had purchased a man.

Not just any man.

A 2.31-meter-tall, 7-foot-7 giant whose shoulders seemed carved from stone and whose back carried the strange hieroglyphics of old scars. A slave so large that even the most hardened slave drivers in New Orleans had stepped backward the first time he rose to his full height.

The price:
$3,000.

A sum so outrageous that the newspapers whispered it. So reckless that neighboring planters exchanged looks of disgust mixed with envy. So humiliatingly desperate that members of Whitmore’s secret fraternal order—the Brotherhood of St. Mary—raised their eyebrows in dark amusement.

A plantation owner paying that much for a single enslaved man was unheard of. It was a flex, a statement, a violent declaration of wealth and dominance.

Whitmore thought he understood what he was buying.

He did not.
None of them did.

Because within ten hours of that purchase, Magnolia Plantation would cease to exist.
Within ten hours, thirteen men—including overseers, guards, and Whitmore himself—would be dead.
Within ten hours, every enslaved person on the property would vanish into the swamp like smoke.

And the giant?
The man hauled through Louisiana by seven slave dogs and three horses?

He would simply disappear.

This is the story of what really happened on that day.

A story historians buried.
A story the swamp remembers.
A story investigators still whisper about in the back rooms of dusty archives.

THE ROAD TO MAGNOLIA
Six Horses, Seven Dogs, and One Man in Chains

The dirt road cutting across Louisiana’s swamp country was little more than a scar, a narrow stretch of packed earth bordered by cypress trees, tangled roots, and slow, black water.

Six white men rode on horseback.
Seven slave dogs—bloodhound-mastiff hybrids bred for one purpose only—circled the group, their deep-throated growls vibrating through the humid air.
And at the center of it all walked the giant.

Chains weighed down his wrists and ankles.
Forty pounds of iron forged specially for him.
Each link as thick as a man’s thumb.
And yet he moved with a steady, measured pace, his breathing calm, his expression unreadable beneath the afternoon sun.

His name, as the papers would later record, was Josiah.
But those who knew fragments of the truth—those who whispered stories in slave quarters and maroon camps—claimed that wasn’t his real name at all.

They said he had another name.
A name spoken in a language older than Louisiana itself.
A name that meant the one who returns.

But on this particular road, he walked like a man preparing for something inevitable.

The overseer riding behind him watched carefully.

His name was Tucker—lean, sharp, a man whose entire adult life had been built on breaking other men. His hands were callused from decades of whipping flesh open. Beneath his jaw ran an old scar left by a slave he’d crippled years earlier.

Tucker wanted more than anything to use his whip on Josiah.

Not for discipline.
Not for dominance.
But for reassurance.

Men like Tucker needed fear to function. Seeing a man this large, this silent, this unbothered by chains—it unsettled him in ways he didn’t know how to articulate.

So he cracked his whip.

Hard.

The sound slapped the air like a pistol shot. Dogs barked wildly. Horses snorted and kicked dust. The other riders stiffened, their hands moving reflexively toward their weapons.

Josiah did nothing.

Did not flinch.
Did not turn his head.
Did not acknowledge the sound.

Tucker cracked it again—this time close enough that the leather snapped inches from Josiah’s ear.

Still nothing.

A strange, cold feeling crawled up Tucker’s spine—something he had not felt since the day a slave nearly killed him with a hoe blade in Natchez.

Fear.

Real fear.

The kind that warns a man he is facing something he does not have the tools to control.

That’s when Josiah stopped walking.

Simply halted in the middle of the road with the same deliberate control he’d shown all day.

And every dog lost its mind.

They lunged, snarled, snapped at the air. Chains strained. Handlers cursed and dug their heels into the road, trying desperately to restrain the animals.

The horses reared.
The men panicked.
Tucker lifted the whip again—but this time his hand trembled.

Slowly, Josiah turned his head.

His eyes locked with Tucker’s.

And what Tucker saw in those eyes would replay in nightmares until the day he died.

It wasn’t rage.
Or fear.
Or pain.

It was something infinitely worse.

Patience.

Patience so absolute, so unnervingly calm, that Tucker’s throat tightened.

Patience that belonged to a man who already knew how the day would end.

Patience that whispered:
Not yet. But soon.

THE MARKET WHERE THE LEGEND BEGAN
Three Days Earlier — New Orleans

The French Quarter pulsed with the usual Tuesday auction chaos—shouting traders, crying families, the agonized wails of women being separated from their children.

But on this day someone new stepped onto the platform.

Lot #47.

The giant.

The crowd fell silent, as if hundreds of men inhaled at the same moment.

He was taller than any slave ever recorded in Louisiana.
Taller than any boxer, any wrestler, any plantation strongman.
His shadow stretched across the wooden platform like some ancient monument.

And the scars—

Those scars.

They weren’t the jagged, brutal marks left by plantation whips. They formed strange, methodical patterns across his chest and back. Lines and shapes arranged with unnerving symmetry.

The auctioneer—Devereaux, a man known for his calm demeanor—momentarily lost his voice when he first saw him.

Then he turned to the crowd, arms spread wide.

“Gentlemen, I present a physical specimen the likes of which I have never encountered in thirty years of trade—”

The bidding escalated quickly.

1,200.
2,000.

Any sane man would have stopped.

But Bogard Whitmore was not sane.
Not anymore.
Not after what the Brotherhood demanded of its members.

When the bidding reached $2,800, even the Mississippi planters backed away.

Whitmore raised his hand.

“Three thousand.”

Stunned silence.

Then the gavel crashed.

Sold.

Whitmore approached his new property for the first time. His boots crunched on sawdust. His cigar smoke drifted upward in a lazy spiral.

He stood directly in front of Josiah—close enough to smell the ash and sweat on his own shirt—and said:

“You belong to me now. You will do what I tell you. You understand?”

Josiah lifted his head.

His voice—deep, resonant, impossibly calm—vibrated the air.

“Yes, master.
I will do exactly what I was brought here to do.”

It was the “exactly” that lingered.

The phrasing.
The emphasis.
The intent.

Whitmore didn’t notice.
But Tucker did.

And so did an old slave chained nearby—an ancient man with white hair who began to weep softly the moment Josiah spoke.

He whispered something in an African tongue.

Another slave translated later.

“He says the tall one does not serve masters.
He serves memory.
And memory has come to collect its debt.”

Tucker ignored the warning.

He would regret that until the moment the dogs turned on him.

INTO THE SWAMP
Where Drums Speak and the Air Thickens

By midafternoon, the convoy left the open fields and entered the swamp proper.

The air grew almost liquid—wet, heavy, and vibrating with unseen life. Spanish moss hung like long gray ghosts. Cypress knees jutted from the water like bones. The deep-green canopy swallowed the sky.

Even the dogs sensed something wrong.

Their growls were lower.
More uncertain.
Less confident.

Then came the drums.

Soft at first, distant, like echoes carried over water.
Then layered—two drums, three, five—until the rhythms interwove into a sound that tightened every white man’s throat.

Maroon drums.

The sound of fugitives.
Free people who lived where no white man dared go.
People plantation owners could not control, could not cage, could not kill.

Tucker’s horse shivered beneath him.

He turned once more to Josiah.

The giant’s lips moved.

He was counting the drums.

Mapping them.
Interpreting.

As if he knew every pattern.
Every signal.
Every message.

And then the bridge appeared.

The place where everything began to unravel.

Where the truth revealed itself.

Where death started its quiet march.

PART II — THE BRIDGE OF ALLIGATORS
A Place Swamp Maps Refuse to Mark

Every overseer in Louisiana knew the bridge.

It appeared on no official documents.
No plantation maps acknowledged it.
No military survey dared detail what lay beneath its rotting planks.

But every slave catcher, every marsh scout, every man who had ridden far enough into the lost veins of the bayou knew the truth:

The bridge belonged to the swamp.
Not to the people who crossed it.

The locals whispered that the structure had been built by the French, repaired by the Spanish, and feared by everyone since. Not because of its condition—it could hold a wagon when it wanted to—but because of what waited underneath.

Alligators always gathered there.
Not one or two.
But dozens.

Not hunting.
Not wandering.
Not sunning themselves.

Waiting.

As if answering a call.

And when the convoy approached, even the horses—half-starved from a long day’s heat—slowed down on their own, snorting and stamping at the muddy ground.

Whitmore squinted at the water below.

“Why are there so many?”

No one answered.

Because no one knew.

No one sane wanted to know.

THE HUMMING
What Josiah Did That Broke Every Rule of the Natural World

Josiah stepped onto the wooden bridge first, chains clinking, boards groaning beneath his weight.

Twenty feet out, he stopped.

The dogs began whining, then growling, then snapping at their handlers in panic.

“Keep moving!” Tucker barked.

No response.

No flinch.

No recognition at all.

Then Josiah tilted his head slightly, as if listening to something only he could hear.

And he hummed.

It was a low, throaty vibration—too deep for the human ear to fully interpret, too ancient for the swamp not to recognize.

The water responded first.

It quivered.
Then rippled.
Then began to churn.

Alligators emerged—not with the lazy drift of reptiles but with purpose, rising like dark, prehistoric shapes pulled by gravity in reverse.

Their eyes locked onto the giant on the bridge.

Tucker felt his heart seize.

“Stop!” he shouted. “Stop that!
Whatever you’re doing—STOP!”

But the humming grew deeper, resonating through the boards beneath their feet.

Even the horses panicked.
One reared so violently its rider fell off and nearly toppled into the water.

But it was the smell that broke the last thread of composure.

A metallic, coppery scent rising from the water—the scent of blood long dried, long soaked into the mud, long remembered by things that were not supposed to remember anything.

That’s when it happened.

The First Death

Perkins—young, arrogant, always eager to prove himself tougher than his own horse—lost control for a single second.

It was enough.

His mount slipped on a wet plank. Perkins fell into the water with a splash that cut the conversation of insects in half.

He surfaced once.

Just once.

His scream wasn’t even fully formed when the first alligator struck.

Then another.
And another.
And another.

The water erupted into a frenzy of snapping jaws and thrashing bodies.

Bones cracked like wet branches.
Blood ribboned across the dark surface.
The screams gurgled into nothing.

And through it all, Josiah watched.

Expressionless.
Still humming.

Until, one by one, the alligators drifted back into the depths, their hunger satisfied.

The swamp returned to silence.

Whitmore stared across the bridge, face drained of color.

“Accident,” he said quickly.
Desperately.
Stupidly.

“Perkins fell. That’s all. The gators did the rest.”

Tucker’s breath trembled.

He wanted to yell the truth.

He wanted to grab Whitmore by his expensive collar and scream:

“HE MADE THEM DO IT.”

But he didn’t.

Because at that moment, as he looked across the bridge at the towering shape of Josiah, Tucker realized he wasn’t afraid of punishment for speaking.

He was afraid that speaking would make it real.

THE END OF THE ROAD
A Plantation Already Waiting for Blood

By the time the convoy emerged from the throat of the swamp, the sun had dipped behind the tree line, turning the sky the color of old bruises.

Magnolia Plantation appeared on the horizon—a cluster of white pillars, barns, slave quarters, rice paddies, and processing sheds.

It should have been quiet.

But there was a tension in the air—a static, unnatural heaviness—that made even the dogs lower their tails.

Josiah had not slowed once.
Had not stumbled.
Had not sweated.

He walked like he was being pulled forward by fate itself.

When they reached the central courtyard, Whitmore dismounted with the confidence of a man returning to the empire he built.

“Get him branded,” he ordered. “Then chained in the holding yard. We start him at dawn.”

Tucker nodded, but his eyes never left Josiah.

Something was wrong.

Something was very wrong.

THE BRANDING
The First Man Who Looked Into Josiah’s Eyes and Broke

The blacksmith, Collins, was a broad man—thick-necked, barrel-chested, used to pain and heat and the smell of burning flesh.

Branding was routine for him.

Cruel, yes.
Sickening, yes.
But routine.

He held the iron without fear as he stepped toward Josiah—who was now on his knees, wrists unlocked, arms restrained by two guards on each side.

The iron glowed white-hot.
Sparks drifted from the tip.
The smell of searing metal filled the air.

Collins raised it.

And Josiah lifted his head.

Their eyes met.

Something happened inside Collins’s mind—something silent and immediate and primal.

He dropped the branding iron.

Just dropped it.

Then he fell backward, scrambling away on all fours, tears streaming down his face.

“He—he—he—” Collins stammered, pointing, unable to articulate the terror unraveling him.

He began to sob violently, mumbling prayers and begging for forgiveness.

No one understood what he’d seen.

But everyone understood what it meant:

Whatever was chained before them was not something a human being could brand.

And yet no one moved.

Because at that same moment, a scream tore through the plantation grounds—high, piercing, unmistakably human.

Then another.
And another.

Tucker sprinted up the patrol stairs to the top of the courtyard wall.

And what he saw froze him.

THE TORCHES
A Rebellion No Historian Ever Recorded

Hundreds of torches.

Not ten.
Not twenty.
But hundreds.

Flickering through the rice fields.
Emerging from the swamp.
Approaching from the dirt road they had just traveled.

Moving with precision.
Coordination.
Purpose.

Slaves from Magnolia.
Slaves from neighboring plantations.
Maroon fighters painted in clay and swamp ash.

All converging.

All armed.

All silent.

Until a single voice—deep, resonant—rose above the approaching waves of fire.

Not from the fields.
Not from the swamp.
But from the courtyard.

Josiah stood on his feet.

The broken chains lay at his heels.

He looked up at Tucker and Whitmore on the wall.

And smiled.

The kind of smile a man gives when a promise has finally come due.

Then, without strain, without effort, without hesitation, he pulled the remaining chains from his ankles—snapping iron forged for giants as if it were wet rope.

At that exact moment, the courtyard gates—two heavy, iron-reinforced doors—exploded inward.

Not opened.

Exploded.

As if struck by a force from the outside.

What followed was a blur of screaming men, stampeding chaos, and the unmistakable roar of people who had no intention of surviving the night quietly.

The rebellion had begun.

Not by accident.

Not spontaneously.

But by design.

Tucker understood too late:

Josiah had not been purchased.
He had been delivered.

THE FIRST WAVE
Why the Plantation Fell in Under Three Minutes

Gunshots cracked the air.
Dogs lunged and were immediately cut down.
Rebels swarmed through the courtyard like a living tide.

Some carried machetes.
Some axes.
Some rusted farm tools honed into blades.
Some carried nothing but rage.

The overseers panicked.

Most died where they stood.
One tried to run and was caught before he reached the gate.
Another fired blindly until his gun clicked empty and then his skull met a shovel blade.

Tucker and Whitmore attempted to flee toward the big house, pushing through terrified guards.

But the torches reached the verandas first.

The curtains caught fire instantly.
Then the floorboards.
Then the roof.

Flames raced across Magnolia’s grand facade with unnatural speed—as if the house itself had waited decades for an excuse to burn.

Whitmore’s scream was high and desperate.

“This can’t be happening!
THIS CAN’T BE HAPPENING!”

But it was.
And Tucker knew why.

Because standing in the center of the chaos—untouched, unhurried, unburned—was Josiah.

Not killing.
Not leading the violence.

Just observing.

Making sure everything was unfolding exactly as planned.

PART III — THE NIGHT MAGNOLIA PLANTATION DIED
A Calculated Uprising, Not a Spontaneous Riot

Most rebellion stories recorded in the antebellum South are chaotic—unplanned flashes of desperation, crushed within hours and buried by official reports.

But Magnolia Plantation’s fall was different.

It wasn’t spontaneous.
It wasn’t chaotic.
And it wasn’t isolated.

It was military.

Coordinated.

Unignorably intentional.

What happened that night wasn’t the work of hundreds of terrified, enraged slaves reacting to some sudden opportunity.

It was the execution of a plan structured over years.

A plan that needed one specific man to trigger it:

The giant the Brotherhood purchased.

The man named Josiah.

THE RECKONING
Tucker’s Last Fight

As the first wave of rebels flooded into Magnolia’s central courtyard, Tucker and Whitmore were forced against the livestock pens. Two guards fell beside them—one with a cracked skull, the other stabbed repeatedly with a broken hoe blade.

Tucker swung his rifle like a club, breaking a rebel’s jaw. Another tackled him. They rolled across the dirt until Tucker kicked free and bolted toward the rear granary.

Behind him, Whitmore shrieked:

“HELP ME, TUCKER!”

Tucker didn’t look back.

Even in the chaos, his overseer’s mind understood what Josiah had done:

He broke the chains exactly when the rebels arrived.

He directed the rebellion with subtle gestures, not direct commands.

He moved through the battlefield untouched—as if protected.

He had known the swamp maroons were coming.

He had timed the bridge incident to weaken their numbers.

This wasn’t luck.
It wasn’t coincidence.

It was a strategy.

One Tucker was now trapped inside.

He ducked behind a rain barrel, panting hard. Sweat stung his eyes, blood dripped from his hairline. He peeked around the corner just in time to see Whitmore surrounded by six rebels.

They dragged the plantation owner toward the burning big house, ignoring his screams.

One of the rebels—an elderly woman Tucker recognized from the rice fields—spoke clearly, loudly:

“This is for my children.”

Her machete rose.
Whitmore’s screams pitched higher—

—then cut off.

Tucker gagged and retreated deeper into the shadows.

He wasn’t afraid of dying.
He was afraid of what was killing them.

Josiah stood fifty feet away, watching the fire climb the pillars of the big house, the glow reflecting in his dark, unblinking eyes.

He hadn’t lifted a weapon.
Hadn’t struck a man.
Hadn’t screamed or roared or cursed.

He didn’t need to.

His presence alone commanded the night.

The rebels moved around him without touching him—like waves parting around a ship’s hull.

Tucker finally understood:

Josiah didn’t free the slaves that night.
They freed themselves.
But they did it because he made them believe they could.

Fear changed sides.

And the overseer was part of the old world that was collapsing.

Rebels spotted Tucker. He swung his rifle wildly, hitting one in the temple. Another tackled him. A third drove a wooden stake into his collarbone.

He kicked, punched, thrashed, roared.

But it didn’t matter.

The blows kept coming—fists, boots, stones, handles of axes he had once used to terrorize others.

Tucker’s last sight before his vision went black was Josiah standing calmly beside the burning mansion—sweat glowing on his skin, eyes reflecting fire, expression unreadable.

A witness to the destruction he had orchestrated.

Then everything went dark.

THE HOUSE OF SECRETS
The Documents the Brotherhood Tried to Erase

While the plantation burned, Josiah walked into the collapsing big house—moving through smoke and flame with slow, deliberate strides.

It was already an inferno.
Windows burst from heat.
The porch roof cracked.
The spiral staircase glowed like molten bone.

Rebels shouted at him to stay back.
He ignored them.

He moved with purpose.

Not toward riches.
Not toward freedom papers.
Not toward Whitmore’s safe full of money and land deeds.

He walked toward something much darker.

Behind a portrait of Whitmore’s grandfather—one of the founding members of the secret society—was a concealed lockbox containing:

Brotherhood meeting ledgers

Records of ritual tortures

Names of victims

Lists of members

Maps of hidden burial sites

Letters from judges, priests, bankers

Documents that, if exposed, would destroy the social structure of St. Mary Parish—and perhaps half of Louisiana’s planter aristocracy.

Josiah opened the safe without hesitation.

Because he already knew it was there.

He wrapped the documents in oilcloth, protecting them from flame and moisture.

He wasn’t stealing them.

He was preserving them.

Evidence.

Weapons.

Truths sharp enough to scar entire families.

Later abolitionists would claim that a mysterious “source” supplied critical information that helped them expose violent planter networks.

Historians now suspect this moment—this night—was where that evidence came from.

Because the Brotherhood’s corruption didn’t survive the Civil War.

But Josiah did.

THE LAST FALL OF MAGNOLIA

The fire consumed:

the big house

the slave quarters

the barns

the overseer’s residence

the drying sheds

the rice mill

the livestock pens

Everything the Whitmore family had built on the backs of hundreds of enslaved people went up in roaring, righteous flame.

Rebel fighters carried away slaves from Magnolia and neighboring plantations. Nearly a hundred vanished into the swamp that night.

Of the twenty-three white men living or working on the property:

twenty died

two fled

one body was never identified

When dawn broke, Magnolia was a blackened skeleton. Smoke curled from the ruins. Bodies littered the courtyard and fields.

But Josiah was already gone.

Not wounded.
Not chased.
Not hunted.

Simply gone.

As if he had walked back into the swamp and returned to wherever he came from.

THE WAR AGAINST THE BROTHERHOOD
Thirteen Men in Thirteen Days

Over the next two weeks, a quiet war swept through St. Mary Parish.

One by one, the remaining Brotherhood members began to die.

Judge Pelum: found beneath his overturned carriage, skull crushed.

Reverend Crenshaw: burned alive inside his parsonage.

Banker Lyall: disappeared on the road to Houma; never found.

Councilman Rivette: throat slit in his study, no forced entry.

Colonel Dandridge: bitten by his own dogs during a midnight frenzy.

Officials blamed “agitated slaves.”
Newspapers blamed “Northern abolitionist agitators.”
The Brotherhood blamed “supernatural vengeance.”

But maroons whispered that it was Josiah.

Not killing them directly.
But guiding others.
Pointing them toward targets.
Handing over documents.
Exposing weaknesses.

A strategist, not an executioner.

The man who toppled Magnolia did not vanish into myth.

He went to work.

AFTER THE SMOKE
A Free Man in the North

Josiah escaped Louisiana and reached Ohio via maroon guides and sympathetic river workers.

From there he traveled to Philadelphia under the alias Josiah Freeman, where he married, raised three sons, and worked as a carpenter.

He rarely spoke of his past.
But abolitionists who met him described him as:

frighteningly calm

impossibly strong

fiercely intelligent

deeply spiritual

careful with every word

One abolitionist wrote in a letter:

“When he looks at you, you feel as if he has already measured your entire soul.”

He lived to see slavery abolished in 1865.
He lived to vote for the first time.
He lived to see Black children attend school.

He died in 1899 at the age of 81.

At his funeral, hundreds came.
White and Black.
Rich and poor.
Ministers and former slaves.

But no one—not even his own children—knew the full story of Magnolia Plantation.

Until researchers in the 1990s uncovered partial accounts in maroon oral histories, hidden ledgers, and fragments of journals recovered from flooded houses in the Louisiana delta.

The picture that emerged was incomplete.

But one truth remained clear:

Someone orchestrated the destruction of Magnolia and the fall of the Brotherhood.
Someone tall.
Someone calm.
Someone patient.

And no other name appears in the records.

Just one:

Josiah.

WHAT HISTORY FORGOT

Modern historians debate the details.

Some claim Josiah was a myth—a folktale stitched from the memories of multiple uprisings.

Others argue he was real, and that the rebellion was erased by white officials terrified of the truth.

Whether literal or symbolic, the core facts endure:

Magnolia burned.

Whitmore and his overseers died.

Almost a hundred slaves vanished into freedom.

Brotherhood members were systematically eliminated.

A giant matching Josiah’s description appears years later in abolitionist records.

Most rebellions were crushed.

But not this one.

Because this rebellion didn’t rely on rage.

It relied on strategy.
On planning.
On a leader with unusual charisma and uncanny presence.

Someone who could walk through the darkest swamp and never fear what stared from the water.

Someone who could stand before dozens of alligators and remain utterly still.

Someone who could look into a man’s eyes and shatter him.

Someone who carried generations of pain—and turned it into precision.

THE LEGEND THAT STILL BREATHES

People living near the old Magnolia site—now a quiet suburban subdivision—still report hearing things at night:

distant drums when no musicians are near

the clink of chains despite the absence of metal

screaming carried by the wind

a low humming that vibrates the walls

Some say it’s the swamp remembering.

Some say it’s the spirits of those who fought.

Some say it’s the echo of a giant who walked out of fire and into legend.

And some swear that on moonless nights, you can see the silhouette of a man—taller than any man should be—standing on the old bridge that once fed the alligators.

Still waiting.

Still watching.

Still patient.

FINAL WORD

History is not just what happened.
History is what survives.

The story of Josiah survived because it had to.
Because people needed to believe that the enslaved were not passive.
That they were not broken.
That they fought back—brutally, brilliantly, strategically.

Magnolia Plantation fell in a single night.

But the system began to fall with it.

Because one giant—one man—walked into bondage not as a victim…

…but as a trigger.

They used 3 horses and 7 dogs to transport a 2.31-meter-tall slave,
but 10 hours later, 23 men were dead, and he had vanished into the swamp.

Some say he was only a man.
Others say he was something more.

But ask the swamp, and it will tell you:

Justice sometimes chooses strange messengers.