The white man here is a master, Percy Driscoll, who is threatening to sell all his slaves "DOWN THE RIVER" if the one who took two dollars does not confess. "Roxy reeled in her tracks and the color vanished out of her face; the others dropped to their knees as if they had been shot; tears gushed from their eyes, their supplicating hands went up," and, after they confess, Driscoll promises only to "sell you here though you don't deserve it. You ought to be sold down the river."
In this passage the narrator makes one of MT's strongest published statements about the rights and wrongs of slaves, saying that when a slave steals from "the man who daily robbed him of an inestimable treasure--his liberty--he was not committing any sin that God would remember against him in the Last Great Day."
The Barrett Collection, UVA PS 1317 .A1 1894