Transcriber’s Note: Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
[Illustration: GENIEVE.]
SAMANTHA
ON
THE RACE PROBLEM
BY
JOSIAH ALLEN’S WIFE
(MARIETTA HOLLEY)
_ILLUSTRATED BY_
F. W. KEMBLE
NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD & COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
COPYRIGHT, 1892,
BY
DODD, MEAD & COMPANY.
[All rights reserved.]
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
“THEY WUZ TRACTS AND BIBLES” 7
UNCLE NATE GOWDEY 12
“THE DUMB FOOLS!” 18
A BLACK 21
“THE OLD AND FEEBLE ONES” 30
“I SOT DEMUTE” 34
“THE DARK FACES OF THESE APOSTLES” 40
“WITH PHILURY’S HELP” 46
CHARACTER SKETCH 51
“WHEN URY HAD THAT FIGHT WITH SAM” 56
MELINDA 61
MELINDA HAS A FIT 63
“IT WUZ ‘HOLD THE FORT’ HE BELCHED OUT IN” 69
“I KETCHED HER BY HER LIMB” 73
PETER AND MELINDA ANN 77
DEACON HENZY 83
“JOSIAH’S BALD HEAD AND MINE” 86
THE COLORED CHILDREN 93
OLD DR. CORK 99
THE SLAVE WOMAN WHO POISONED THE CHILD 104
MADELINE 110
COLONEL SEYBERT 122
“LOW, BRUTAL, ENVIOUS MIND” 128
DEFENDING HIS HOME 133
THE LEADER 138
FELIX AND THE TEACHER 143
“THE OLD, THE FEEBLE” 149
“HIS OVERSEER” 153
“A LITTLE TUMBLE-DOWN COTTAGE” 155
CLEOPATRA 156
ROSY 161
“HE WUZ GLAD TO SET DOWN” 167
THE OLD NEGRO 172
“GAWGE PERKINS AM DAID” 176
ONE OF THE MOURNERS 179
“YOU CAN REPAIR YOUR DWELLIN’ HOUSE” 185
“AND I HAVE GOT THE PANS” 189
“I AM NEEDED THERE” 192
“THE BUTTER-MAKER UP IN ZOAR” 194
“JOSIAH GIVE UP” 196
DEACON HUFFER 208
“UNDER THE WHITE CROSS” 211
THE JONESVILLIANS 215
“BOY LAUGHED” 220
RAYMOND FAIRFAX COLEMAN 223
“WITH A JUMPIN’ TOOTHACHE” 225
“THE RELATION ON MAGGIE’S SIDE” 230
BABE 237
“MY TONE RIZ UP” 239
“I HAD BEEN OUT A WALKIN’” 242
A POOR WHITE 244
ROSY’S BABY 254
URY 256
SOME NEIGHBORS 258
AUNT MELA 264
“DESPATCHED TO GET BUTTERMILK” 271
“THE BIG PIAZZA” 277
“A PERFECT DAGON” 279
A KU-KLUXER 291
“PILOT A HELPLESS UNIONIST” 296
“SET DOWN IN OUR SWAMP” 301
“HE HASTENED OFF” 305
“TO KISS SNOW AND BOY GOOD-NIGHT” 308
“AND KILLED HER HENS” 312
“ONEXPECTED COMPANY” 316
“MISERY” 320
“WHEREFOAH, BREDREN, LET US PRAY” 322
ABE 326
“HE WUZ A WALKIN’ UP AND DOWN” 331
“THIS DARK EARTH VALLEY” 334
HIRAM WIGGINS’S TWO DAUGHTERS 338
“A CLEAR RIVER RUNNING THROUGH” 343
“EVERYTHING WUZ READY” 347
“IN THE CHAIR OF THE RULER” 353
“FACED THE GANG OF MASKED MEN” 360
“WHEN THE MOON HAD RISEN” 363
“EXILED BIRDS” 369
VICTOR 373
“MAKIN’ SPEECHES” 375
FATHER GASPERIN 378
“FELIX, HIS WIFE AND LITTLE NED” 380
“I SOT OUT ON THE STOOP” 384
[Illustration: “THEY WUZ TRACTS AND BIBLES.”]
CHAPTER I.
IT was entirely onexpected and onlooked for.
But I took it as a Decree, and done as well as I could, which is jest
as well as anybody ought to be expected to do under any circumstances,
either on my side or on hisen.
It was one of the relations on his side that come on to us entirely
onexpected and on the evenin’ stage that runs from Jonesville to
Loontown. He was a passin’ through this part of the country on
business, so he stopped off at Jonesville to see us.
He come with his portmanty and a satchel, and I mistrusted, after
consultin’ them signs in the privacy of my own mind, that he had come
to stay for quite a spell.
But I found in the fulness of time that my worst apprehensions wuz not
realized.
I found instead of pantaloons and vests and things which I suspected
wuz in the big satchel, I found out they wuz tracts and Bibles.
Why, I wuz fairly took aback when I discovered this fact, and felt
guilty to think I had been cast down, and spozed things that wuzn’t so.
But whether they are on his side or on your own, visitors that come
when you are deep in house-cleanin’, and most all your carpets took up,
and your beds oncorded, and your buttery shelves dry and arid, can’t be
welcomed with quite the cordiality you would show one in more different
and prosperous times.
But we found out after a little conversation that Cousin John Richard
Allen wuz a colporter, and didn’t lay out to stay only one night. So,
as I say, I done the best I could with him, and felt my conscience
justified.
He had a dretful good look to his face, for all mebby he wouldn’t be
called beautiful. His eyes wuz deep and brilliant and clear, with a
meanin’ in ’em that comes from a pure life and a high endeavor—a
generous, lovin’ soul.
Yes, though it wuz one on his side instid of mine, justice makes me say
he seemed to be a good feller, and smart as a whip, too. And he seemed
to feel real friendly and cousinly towards us, though I had never laid
eyes on him more than once or twice before. Josiah had known him when
they wuz boys.
He had lived in Vermont, and had been educated high, been through
college, and preachin’ schools of the best kind, and had sot out in
life as a minister, but bein’ broke up with quinsy, and havin’ a desire
to be in some Christian work, he took to colporterin’, and had been
down in the Southern States to work amongst the freedmen for years.
He went not long after the war closed. I guess he hated to give up
preachin’, for I believe my soul that he wanted to do good, and bein’
so awful smart it wuz a cross, I know—and once in a while he would
kind o’ forget himself, and fall into a sort o’ preachin’, eloquent
style of talkin’, even when he wuz conversin’ on such subjects as
butter, and hens, and farmin’, and such. But I know he did it entirely
onbeknown to himself.
And to the table—the blessin’ he asked wuz as likely a one as I ever
see run at anybody’s table, but it wuz middlin’ lengthy, as long about
as a small-sized sermon.
Josiah squirmed—I see he did. He squirmed hard, though he is a good
Christian man. He wuz afraid the cream biscuit would be spilte by the
delay; they are his favorites, and though I am fur from bein’ the one
that ought to speak of it, my biscuit are called delicious.
And though I hate to say it, hate to show any onwillingness to be
blessed to any length by so good a man and so smart a one—yet I must
say them biscuit wuzn’t the biscuit they would have been had the
blessin’ been more briefer, and they had been eat earlier.
Howsomever, they wuz pretty good ones after all, and Cousin John
Richard partook of five right along one after the other, and seemed to
enjoy the fifth one jest as well as he did the earlier editions. They
wuzn’t very large, but light, and tender.
Wall, after supper, he and my pardner sot down in the settin’-room,
while I wuz a washin’ up the dishes, and a settin’ the sponge for my
griddle-cakes for breakfast.
And I hearn ’em a talkin’ about Uncle Noah, and Uncle Darius,
and Cousin Melinda, and Sophronia Ann, and Aunt Marrier and her
children—and lots more that I had never hearn of, or had forgot if I
had.
They seemed to be a takin’ solid comfort, though I see that Cousin John
Richard every time he got a chance would kinder preach on ’em.
If there wuz a death amongst ’em that they talked over, John Richard
would, I see, instinctively and onbeknown to himself preach a little
funeral sermon on ’em, a first-rate one, too, though flowery, and draw
quite a lot of morals. Wall, I thought to myself, they are a takin’
sights of comfort together, and I am glad on it. I dearly love to see
my pardner happy.
When all of a sudden, jest as I had got my sponge all wet up, and
everything slick, and I wuz a washin’ my hands to the sink, I see there
wuz a more excited, voyalent axent a ringin’ out in my pardner’s voice,
I see he wuz a gettin’ het up in some argument or other, and I hurried
and changed my gingham bib apron for a white one, and took my knittin’
work and hastened into the room, bein’ anxious to avert horstilities,
and work for peace.
And I see I wuz only jest in time; for my companion wuz a gettin’
agitated and excited to a high degree, and Cousin John Richard all
rousted up.
And the very first words I hearn after I went in wuz these offensive
and quarrelsome words that do so much to stir up strife and
dessensions—
They have madded me time and agin. They proceeded out of my companion’s
mouth, and the words wuz:
“Oh shaw!”
I see in a minute that John Richard couldn’t brook ’em. And I wunk to
Josiah Allen to stop, and let Cousin John Richard go on and say what he
wuz a minter, both as a visiter, who wuz goin’ to remain with us but a
short period, and also a relation, and a ex-minister.
My wink said all of this, and more. And my companion wuz affected by
it. But like a child a cryin’ hard after bein’ spanked, he couldn’t
stop short off all to once.
So he went on, but in fur mellerer axents, and more long sufferin’er
ones:
“Wall, I say there is more talk than there is any need of. I don’t
believe things are to such a pass in the South. I don’t take much stock
in this Race Problem anyway. The Government whipped the South and
freed the niggers. And there it is, all finished and done with. And
everything seems quiet so fur as I can hear on.
“I hain’t heard nuthin’ about any difficulty to speak on, nor I don’t
believe Uncle Nate Gowdey has, or Sime Bently. And if there wuz much of
anything wrong goin’ on, one of us three would have been apt to have
hearn on it.
“For we are, some of us, down to the corners about every night, and get
all the news there is a stirrin’.
“Of course there is some fightin’ everywhere. Uncle Nate hearn of a new
fight last night, over to Loontown. We get holt of everything. And I
don’t believe there is any trouble down South, and if there is, they
will get along well enough if they are left alone, if there hain’t too
much said.”
[Illustration: UNCLE NATE GOWDEY.]
Sez John Richard, “I have lived in the South for years, and I know
what I am talking about. And I say that you Northern people, and
in fact all the nation, are like folks sitting on the outside of a
volcano, laughing and talking in your gay indifference, and thinking
the whole nation is in safety, when the flames and the lava torrents
of destruction are liable to burst out at any time and overwhelm this
land in ruin.”
And then agin, though I hate to set it down—then agin did my pardner
give vent to them dangerous and quarrelsome sentiments before I could
reach him with a wink or any other precautionary measures. That rash
man said agin:
“Oh shaw!”
And I see, devoted Christian as John Richard wuz, the words gaulded him
almost more than he could endure, and he broke out in almost heated
axents, and his keen dark eye a flashin’, and says he:
“I tell you the storm is brewing! I have watched it coming up and
spreading over the land, and unless it is averted, destruction awaits
this people.”
His tone wuz a very preachin’ one, very, and I felt considerable
impressed by it; but Josiah Allen spoke up pert as a peacock, and sez
he:
“Why don’t the Southern folks behave themselves, then?”
And sez John Richard:
“Do you blame the Southern white folks exclusively?”
“Yes,” sez Josiah, in them same pert axents; “yes, of course I do.”
“Then that shows how short-sighted you are, how blind!”
“I can see as well as you can!” sez Josiah, all wrought up—“I don’t
have to wear goggles.”
Oh, how mortified, how mortified I felt! John Richard did wear blue
goggles when he wuz travellin’. But what a breach of manners to twit a
visiter of such a thing! Twit ’em of goggles, blue ones too! I felt as
if I should sink.
But I didn’t know Cousin John Richard Allen. He hadn’t give up ease and
comfort and the joys of a fireside, for principle’s sake, for nuthin’.
No personal allusions could touch him. The goggles fell onto him
harmlessly, and fell off agin. He didn’t notice ’em no more’n if they
hadn’t been throwed.
And he went on growin’ more and more sort o’ lifted up and
inspired-lookin’, and a not mindin’ what or who wuz round him. And sez
he:
“I tell you again the storm is rising; I hear its mutterings in the
distance, and it is coming nearer and nearer all the time.”
Josiah kinder craned his neck and looked out of the winder in a sort
of a brisk way. He misunderstood him a purpose, and acted as if John
Richard meant a common thunder-storm.
But Cousin John Richard never minded him, bein’ took up and intent on
what his own mind wuz a lookin’ at onbeknown to us—
“I have been amongst this people night and day for years; I have been
in the mansions of the rich, the ruins of the beautiful homes ruined by
the war, and in the cabins of the poor. I have been in their schools
and their churches, and the halls where the law is misadministered—I
have been through the Southern land from one end to the other—and I
know what I am talking about.
“I went there to try to help the freedmen. I knew these people so
lately enslaved were poor and ignorant, and I thought I could help them.
“But I was almost as ignorant as you are of the real state of affairs
in the South. But I have been there and seen for myself, and I tell
you, and I tell this nation, that we are on the eve of another war if
something is not done to avert it.”
My pardner wuz jest a openin’ his mouth in a derisive remark, but I
hitched my chair along and trod on his foot, and onbeknown to me it wuz
the foot on which he wuz raisin’ a large corn, and his derisive remark
wuz changed to a low groan, and Cousin John Richard went on onhendered.
“I went South with good motives, God knows. I knew this newly
enfranchised race was sorely in want of knowledge, Christian knowledge
most of all.
“I thought, as so many others do, that Christianity and education would
solve this problem. I never stopped to think that the white race, of
whose cruelty the negroes complained, had enjoyed the benefits of
Christianity for hundreds of years, and those whose minds were enriched
by choicest culture had hearts encased in bitterest prejudices, and it
was from the efforts of their avarice and selfishness that I was trying
to rescue the freedmen. We accomplished much, but I expected, as so
many others have, choicer Christian fruits to spring from this barren
soil, that has grown in the rich garden cultivated for centuries.
“Education has done and will do much—Christianity more; but neither
can sound a soundless deep, nor turn black night into day.
“But I never thought of this. I worked hard and meant well, Heaven
knows. I thought at first I could do marvellous things; later, when
many failures had made me more humble, I thought if I could help
only one soul my labor would not be in vain. For who knows,” sez John
Richard dreamily, “who knows the tremendous train of influences one
sets in motion when he is under God enabled to turn one life about from
the path of destruction towards the good and the right?
“Who knows but he is helping to kindle a light that shall yet lighten
the pathway of a Toussaint L’Ouverture or a Fred Douglass on to
victory, and a world be helped by the means?
“And if only one soul is helped, does not the Lord of the harvest say,
‘He that turns one man from the error of his ways has saved a soul from
death’?”
Cousin John Richard’s eye looked now as if he wuz a gazin’ deep into
the past—the past of eager and earnest endeavor, and way beyend it
into the past that held a happy home, and the light from that forsaken
fireside seemed to be a shinin’ up into his face, divinely sad, bitter
sweet, as he went on:
“I loved my wife and children as well as another man, but I left them
and my happy, happy home to go where duty called.
“My wife could not endure that hot climate, and she lay dying when I
was so far South that I could not get to her till she had got so far
down in the Valley that she could not hear my voice when I spoke to
her.”
Ah! the waves of memory wuz a dashin’ hard aginst Cousin John Richard
then, as we could see. It splashed some of the spray up into his bright
eyes.
But he kept on: “I was rich enough then to put my children to school,
which I did, and then returned to my labors.
“I loved my work—I felt for it that enthusiasm and devotion that
nerves the heart to endure any trials—and I don’t speak of the
persecutions I underwent in that work as being harder than what many
others endured.
“You know what they passed through who preached the higher truth in
Jerusalem. The Book says, ‘They were persecuted, afflicted, tormented,
had cruel buffetings and scourgings, were burned, were tortured, not
accepting deliverance.’
“In the early days after the war, in some parts of the South there were
hardly any indignities that could be inflicted upon us that we were
not called upon to endure. We had our poor houses burned down over our
heads, our Bible and spelling-books thrown into the flames; we have had
rifles pointed at our breasts, and were ordered to leave on peril of
death.
“And many, many more than you Northerners have any idea of met their
death in the dark cypress forests and in the dreary, sandy by-ways of
the Southern States.
“They died, ‘not accepting deliverance’ by cowardly flight. How many
of them thus laid down their lives for conscience’ sake will never be
known till that hour when _He_ comes to make up His jewels.
“I bear the marks upon me to-day, and shall carry them to my grave, of
the tortures inflicted upon me to make me give up my work of trying to
help the weak and seek and save them that were lost.”
“The dumb fools!” hollered out Josiah. “What did they act so like
idiots for—and villains? The Southerners always did act like the Old
Harry anyway.”
[Illustration: “THE DUMB FOOLS!”]
My dear companion is fervid and impassioned in his feelin’s and easily
wrought on, and he felt what he said. John Richard wuz a relation on
his own side, and he could not calmly brook the idee of his sufferin’s.
But Cousin John didn’t look mad, nor excited, nor anything. He had a
sort of a patient look onto his face, and as if he had tried to reason
things out for some time.
“Such a state of affairs was inevitable,” sez he. “Then you don’t
blame the cussed fools, do you?” yelled out Josiah, fearfully wrought
up and agitated.
Oh, what a word to use, and to a minister too—“cussed”! I felt as if
I should sink right down into the suller—I wuz about over the potato
ben—and I didn’t much care if I did sink, I felt so worked up.
But Cousin John Richard didn’t seem to mind it at all. He had got
up into a higher region than my soul wuz a sailin’ round in—he had
got up so high that little buzzin’, stingin’ insects that worried me
didn’t touch him; he had got up into a calm, pure atmosphire where they
couldn’t fly round.
He went on calm as a full moon on a clear night, and sez he:
“It is difficult to put the blame for this state of affairs on any one
class, the evil is so far spread. The evil root was planted centuries
ago, and we are partaking of its poison fruit to-day.
“In looking on such a gigantic wrong we must look on it on other sides
than the one whose jagged edges have struck and bruised us—we must
look on it on every side in order to be just.
“After years and years of haughty supremacy, ambition and pride growing
rankly, as they must in such a soil, fostered, it would seem, by
Northern indolence and indifference, the South was conquered by armed
force—brought down to the humiliation of defeat by a successful, if
generous foe.
“And then, what was far harder for them to endure, a race of people
that they had looked upon much as you look upon your herd of cattle
was suddenly raised from a condition of servitude to one of legal
equality, and in many cases of supremacy.
“It was hard for this hot-blooded, misguided, warm-hearted Southern
people to lose at once all their brilliant dreams of an independent,
aristocratic Confederacy—it was hard for them to lose home, and
country, and wealth, and ambition at one blow.
“It was hard for their proud, ambitious leader to have his beautiful
old country home, full of aristocratic associations and sweet memories,
turned into the national graveyard.
“And this one tragedy that changed this sweet home into a mausoleum is
not a bad illustration of what the Southern people endured.
“No matter what brought this thing about—no matter where the blame
rested—it was _hard_ for them to stand by the graves of their loved
ones, who fell fighting for the lost cause—to stand amongst the ruins
of their dismantled homes, and know that their proud, ambitious dreams
were all ended.
“But this they could endure—it was the fortune of war, and they had
to submit. But to this other indignity, as they called it, they would
_not_ submit.
“Through centuries of hereditary influences and teachings this belief
was ingrained, born in them, bone of their bone, flesh of their flesh,
soul of their soul, implanted first by nature, then hardened and made
invulnerable by centuries of habits, beliefs, and influences—this
instinctive, hereditary contempt and aversion for the black race only
as servants.
“And they _would not_ endure to have them made their equals.
“Now, no preaching, be it with the tongue of men or angels, could
vanquish this ingrained, inexorable foe, this silent, overmastering
force that rose up on every side to set at naught our preaching.
[Illustration: A BLACK.]
“After twenty-five years of Christian effort it remains the same, and
at the end of a century of Gospel work it will still be there just the
same.
“And those who do not take into consideration this overwhelming power
of antagonism between the races when they are considering the Southern
question are fools.
“The whites _will_ not look upon the negroes as their equals, and you
cannot make them—”
“Wall, they be!” hollered out Josiah. “The Proclamation made ’em free
and equal, jest as we wuz made in the War of 1812.”
“But oh, what a difference!” sez Cousin John Richard sadly.
“The American colonies were the peers of the mother country. It was
only a quarrel between children and mother. The same blood ran in their
veins, they had the same traits, the same minds, the same looks, they
were truly equal.
“But in this case it was an entirely different race, necessarily
inferior by their long years of degradation, brought up at one bound
from the depths of ignorance and servitude to take at once the full
rights awarded to intellect and character.
“It was a great blunder; it was a sad thing for the white race and for
the black race!”
Josiah wuz jest a openin’ his mouth to speak in reply to Cousin John
Richard’s last words, when all of a sudden we heard a knock at the
door, and I went and opened it, and there stood Miss Eben Garlock, and
I asked her to come in, and sot her a chair.
I never over and above liked Miss Eben Garlock, though she is a likely
woman enough so fur as I know.
But she is one of the kind of wimmen who orniment the outside of their
heads more than the inside, and so on with their hearts and souls, etc.
She is a great case for artificial flowers, and ribbin loops, and
fringes. And the flowers that wuz a blowin’ out on her bunnet that day
_would_ have gone a good ways towards fillin’ a half-bushel basket. And
the loops that wuz a hangin’ all round her boddist waist would have
straightened out into half a mile of ribbin, I do believe.
The ribbin wuz kinder rusty, and she had pinned on a bunch of faded red
poppies on to the left side of her boddist waist, pretty nigh, I should
judge, over her heart.
Which goes to prove what I said about her trimmin’ off the outside of
her heart and soul.
Her clothes are always of pretty cheap material, but showy, and made
after sort o’ foamin’ patterns, with streamers, and her favorite
loops and such. And they always have a look as if they wuz in danger
of fallin’ off of her. She uses pins a good deal, and they drop out
considerable and leave gaps.
Wall, I always use her well; so, as I say, I sot her a chair and
introduced her to Cousin John Richard, and he bowed polite to her, and
then leaned back in his chair and seemed restin’. Good land! I should
thought he’d wanted to.
Miss Garlock seemed real agitated and excited, and I remembered hearin’
that forenoon that they had lost a relation considerable distant to
’em. He lived some fifteen or sixteen miles away.
He and Eben Garlock’s folks had never agreed; in fact, they had hated
each other the worst kind. But now Miss Garlock, bein’ made as she wuz,
wuz all nerved up to make a good appearance to the funeral and show
off.
She had come to borry my mournin’ suit that I had used to mourn for
Josiah’s mother in; and I am that careful of my clothes that they wuz
as good as new, though I had mourned in ’em for a year. Mournin’ for
some folks hain’t half so hard on clothes as mournin’ for others; tears
spots black crape awful, and sithes are dretful hard on whalebones; my
clothes wuz good, good as new.
But I am a eppisodin’, and to resoom.
Miss Garlock wanted to borry my hull suit down to shoes and stockin’s
for Eben’s mother, who lived with her. She herself wuz a goin’ to borry
Miss Slimpsey’s dress—she that wuz Betsey Bobbets—it wuz trimmed more
and more foamin’ lookin’. But she wanted my black fan for herself, and
my mournin’ handkerchief pin, it bein’ a very showy one. Ury had gin it
to me, and I never had mourned in it but once, and then not over two
hours, at a church social, for I felt it wuz too dressy for me. But
Miss Garlock had seen it on that occasion and admired it.
And then, after I had told her she could have all these things in
welcome, she kinder took me out to one side and asked me “if I had jest
as lives lend her a Bible for a few days. She thought like as not the
minister would call to talk with Eben’s mother, and she felt that she
should be mortified if he should call for a Bible, for they had all run
out of Bibles,” she said.
“The last one they had by ’em had jest been chawed up by a pup Eben wuz
a raisin’; she had ketched him a worryin’ it out under the back stoop.
She said he had chawed it all up but a part o’ the Old Testament, and
he wuz a worryin’ and gnawin’ Maleky when she got it away from him.”
Wall, I told her she could have the Bible, and she asked me to have the
things done up by the time they got back from Miss Slimpsey’s, and I
told her I would, and I did.
Wall, if you’d believe it, I had hardly got them things done up in a
bundle and laid ’em on the table ready for Miss Garlock, when that
blessed man, John Richard, commenced agin right where he left off, and
sez he, a repeatin’ his last words as calmly as if there had been no
Garlock eppisode.
“It was a great blunder, a sad thing for the white race and the black
race.”
“Wall, what would you have done?” sez Josiah.
“I don’t know,” sez Cousin John sadly—“I don’t know; perhaps mistakes
were inevitable. The question was so great and momentous, and the
danger and the difficulties seemed so impenetrable on every side.”
“Lincoln did the best he could,” sez Josiah sturdily; “and I know it.”
“And so do I know it,” sez Cousin John. “That wise, great heart could
not make any other mistake only a mistake of judgment, and he was
sorely tried to know what was best to do. The burden weighed down upon
him so, I fancy he was glad to lay it down in any way.
“The times were so dark that any measure adopted for safety was only
groping towards the light, only catching at the first rope of safety
that seemed to lower itself through the heavy clouds of war.
“The heavy eyes and true hearts watching through those black hours
will never be forgotten by this republic.
“And now, in looking back and criticising the errors of that time, it
is like the talk of those who are watching a storm at sea, when, in
order to save the ship, wrong ropes may be seized, and life-boats cast
out into the stormy waves may be swept down and lost. But if the ship
is saved, let the survivors of the crew forever bless and praise the
brave hands and hearts that dared the storm and the peril.
“But when the sky is clearer you can see more plainly than when the
tempest is whirling about you and death and ruin are riding on the gale.
“You can see plainer and you can see farther.
“Now, it was a great and charitable idea, looking at it from one side,
to let those who had tried their best to ruin the Union at once take
an equal place with those who had perilled life and property to save
it—to give them _at once_ the same rights in making the laws they had
set at defiance.
“It was a generous and charitable idea, looking on it from one side,
but from another side it looked risky, very risky, and it looked
dangerous to the further peace and perpetuity of that Union.
“A little delay might not have done any harm—a little delay in giving
them the full rights of citizenship.
“And it might, Heaven knows, have been as well if the slaves had had a
gradual bringing up of mind and character to meet the needs of legal
responsibility, if they had not been _at once_ invested with all the
rights and responsibilities which well-trained Christian scholars find
it so difficult to assume, if they had not been required to solve by
the ballot deep questions of statesmanship, the names of which they
could not spell out in the newspaper.
“Could such ignorance make them otherwise than a dangerous element in
politics, dangerous to themselves and dangerous to the welfare of the
Union?
“Tossed back and forth as they were between two conflicting parties,
in their helplessness and ignorance becoming the prey of the strongest
faction, compelled, at the point of the sword and the muzzle of
the revolver, to vote as the white man made them—the law of Might
victorious over the Right—it was a terrible thing for the victim, and
a still worse one for the victor.
“What could happen in such a state of affairs only trouble and misery,
evasions and perversions of the law, uprisings of the oppressed, secret
bands of armed men intent on deeds of violence, whose only motives were
to set at naught the law, to fight secretly against the power they had
been openly forced to yield to.
“What could happen save warfare, bloodshed, burning discontent, and
secret nursing of wrongs amongst the blacks; hatred towards the Union
amongst the whites, towards the successful foe who had humiliated them
so beyond endurance by this last blow of forcing them into a position
of equality towards their former slaves, and rousing up in them a more
bitter animosity towards the poor blacks who had been the innocent
cause of their humiliation.”
“Wall, what could have been done?” sez Josiah.
“It is hard to tell,” sez John Richard. “It is a hard problem to solve;
and perhaps,” sez Cousin John, lookin’ some distance off—“perhaps it
was God’s own way of dealing with this people.
“You know, after the children of Israel had broken the chains of their
bondage and passed through the Red Sea, they were encamped in the
wilderness for forty years before they reached the Land of Promise.
“Maybe it is God’s way of dealing with this people, to make them
willing to press forward through the wilderness of their almost
unendurable trials and go forward into their own country, from whence
their fathers were stolen by these pale faces, and there, in that free,
fresh land to found a new republic of their own.
“And with all the education and civilization they have gathered during
these long, miserable years of slavery, helped by all they have
learned, taught by their losses as well as their gains, found a new
republic that shall yet take its place as one of the great nations of
the world—yes, perhaps lead the nations, and reveal God’s glory in
higher, grander forms than colder-blooded races have ever dreamed of.
For it has seemed as if this people have been peculiarly under His
protection and care.
“All through this long, bloody War of the Rebellion, when it would seem
as if the black race must be crushed between either the upper or lower
millstone of raging sectional warfare, they simply, as if bidden by a
higher power than was seen marching with the armies, ‘stood still and
saw the salvation of the Lord.’”
“Where would you have ’em set up for themselves?” sez Josiah, a lookin’
some sleepy, but holdin’, as it were, his eyes open with a effort.
“Would you have ’em go to Mexico, or Brazil, or where?”
“To Africa,” sez Cousin John Richard, “or that is what is in my own
mind. I don’t know that it would be better than another place, but I
think so.”
“But, good land!” sez Josiah, lookin’ more wakeful, “think of the cost.
Why, it would run the Government in debt to that extent that it never
would get over it.” He looked skairt at the idee. But Cousin John
didn’t; he wuz calm and serene as he went on:
“Thousands and thousands would be able and willing to go on their own
account. But if this nation took them all back at its own expense, is
it not a lawful debt? Who brought them here in the first place? They
did not come of their own accord; no, they were stolen, hunted like
beasts of prey amongst their own fields and forests, felled like wild
animals, and dragged, bleeding from their wounds, into slave ships to
be packed into a living cargo of sweltering agony, and brought off from
friends and home and native land for our selfishness’ sake, to add to
our wealth.
“It seems to me we owe them a debt that we should pay for our own
conscience’ sake as a nation.”
“But the Government couldn’t afford it; it would cost too much.” Josiah
is very close.
[Illustration: “THE OLD AND FEEBLE ONES.”]
“As I said,” sez Cousin John Richard, “thousands of the more
intelligent ones who have property of their own would go at their own
expense for the sake of founding free, peaceful homes, where their
children could have the advantages of independence, freed from the
baleful effects of class antagonism and race prejudices.
“Many of the old and feeble ones, and those who were prosperous and
well off, would not go at all. And of those who remained, if the
Government should transport them and support them there for a year it
would not cost a twentieth part so much as to carry on a civil war.
“And I tell you war will come, Josiah Allen, if something is not done
to avert the storm.”
And agin John Richard’s eyes took on that fur-off look, as if he wuz
lookin’ at things dretful some distance off.
“Amongst the lower classes you can hear muttered curses and half-veiled
threats, and you feel their passion and their burning hatred towards
the race that gave them the Indian gift of freedom—gave it, and then
snatched it out of their hands, and instead of liberty gave them
injustice and worse oppression.
“And the storm is coming up. Evil spirits are in the atmosphere. Over
the better feelings of the white race, dominating them, are the black
shapes of contempt and repulsion towards the race once their servants,
made their equals by a wordy fiction of their enemies, but still under
their feet.
“And in their haughty breasts, as of old, only stronger, is the
determination to have their own way, to rule this ‘ignorant rabble,’
to circumvent the cowardly will of their Northern foe, who had
brought this thing to pass, to still rule them in one way if not in
another—rule or ruin.
“And the storm is coming up the heavens. The lightning is being stored,
and the tempest of hail, the burning lightning, and deafening thunder
peals are awaiting this day of wrath when the storm shall burst.
“And you sit on in your ease and will not believe it.”
His eyes wuz bent on my pardner’s form, who wuz leanin’ back in a
almost luxurious attitude in his soft copper-plate-covered rockin’
chair, but I see he didn’t mean him in particeler; no, his eyes had in
’em a wide, deep look that took in the hull country, North and South,
and he went on in almost eloquent axents:
“The Northern soldier who twenty-five years ago hung up his old rifle
and powder-horn with a sigh of content that the war against oppression
and slavery had been won still sits under them in content and
self-admiration of his prowess, and heeds not at all the signs in the
heavens.
“And the wise men in the National Capital sit peacefully in their high
places and read over complacently the words they wrote down a quarter
of a century ago:
“‘All slaves are free.’
“And the bandage that Justice wears, having slipped too far down over
their wise eyes, they have not seen the handcuffs and chains that have
weighed down the still enslaved.
“And they read these words:
“‘We proclaim peace in all your borders.’
“And lost in triumphant thoughts of what they had done, they did not
heed this truth, that instead of peace hovering down upon the borders
of the fair Southern land, they had blindly and ignorantly, no doubt,
let loose the bitter, corroding, wearing curse of animosity and
ignorant misrule.
“Yes, those wise men had launched these turbulent spirits instead of
peace on the heads of the free and enlightened, if bigoted white people
of the South, and upon the black race.
“And never stopped to think, so it would seem, whether three millions
strong of an ignorant, superstitious, long-degraded people, the
majority of whom could not read nor write, and were ignorant of the
first principles of truth and justice, could suddenly be lifted up to
become the peers, and in many cases the superiors, of a cultured and
refined people who had had long ages of culture and education behind
them, and, above all, class prejudices.
“They never paused to ask themselves whether it was in reality just to
the white race, or whether this superior class would quietly submit to
the legal equality and rule of the inferior.
“The difficulty of this problem did not seem to strike them, whether
by any miracle the white race would at once forget its pride and its
prejudices.
“Whether by a legal enactment a peacock could be made to change its
plumage for the sober habit of a dove, or an eagle develop the humility
of a snail.
“The wise men expected to do more than this, and failed.
“And they never seemed to ponder this side of the question: Whether
it was not cruelty to the weaker class to thus raise up to a greater
strength the prejudice and animosity of the dominant race.
“And whether this premature responsibility they had caused them to
assume was not as cruel as to put knives and rifles into the hands of
babies, and send them out to fight a battle with giants—fight or die.
[Illustration: “I SOT DEMUTE.”]
“And so these wise men, having done their best, it would seem, to rouse
the blind passions and intensify the ignorant prejudice and class
hatred of the blacks, sit at their ease.
“And so the farce has been played out before a pitying heaven, and has
been for a quarter of a century, growing more pitiful to look at year
by year.
“The farce of slave and tyrant masquerading in the robes of liberty
and equality, and the poor Northern zealot playing well his part with
a fool’s cap and bells. The weak crushed and trodden under foot, the
strong shot down by secret violence—murder, rapine, and misrule taking
the part of law, and both races swept along to their ruin like a vision
of the night.”
Why, John Richard’s talk wuz such, he looked on things so different
from what I ever had, he put such new and strange idees into my head
that I can truly say that he skairt me most to death. I sot demute; I
didn’t even think to look to see how my pardner wuz affected by the
startlin’ views he wuz promulgatin’. I dropped stitches, I seamed where
I hadn’t ought to seam; I wuz extremely nerved up and agitated, and he
went on a talkin’ more stranger and startlinger than ever, if possible.
“And still these wise men sit and hardly lift their wise eyes. _But
when the storm bursts_,” sez Cousin John Richard, in a louder voice
than he had used, and more threatenin’ like and prophetic—“when the
storm bursts, methinks these wise men will look up, will get up if
there is enough left of them to stand after the shock and the violence
of the tempest has torn and dashed over them. For the clouds _will_
fill with vengeance, the storm _will_ burst if something is not done
soon to avert the fury of its course.
“Now, this nation can solve this great question peacefully if it will.”
And I sez in agitated axents:
“How?”
I wuz fearful wrought up. I never had mistrusted there wuz such a
state of things anywhere; it come all onbeknown onto me, and sort o’
paralyzed my faculties. I had forgot by this time, if you’ll believe
it, whether I wuz a knittin’ or a tattin’. Why, I shouldn’t have been
surprised if somebody had spoke up and said I wuz a shearin’ a sheep
or pickin’ a goose. I shouldn’t have sensed it, as I know of, I wuz so
dumbfoundered and lost and by the side of myself.
Sez I, “How?”
And sez he, “Let the colored race go into a home and a country of their
own. Let them leave the people and the influences that paralyze and
hinder their best efforts. Let them leave a race that they burden and
hamper and oppress, for injustice reacts worse upon the victor than
upon the victim. The two races cannot live together harmoniously; they
have tried the experiment for hundreds of years, and failed.”
I murmured almost mechanically:
“Won’t religion and education make ’em harmoniouser?”
But before John Richard could answer my question, Eben Garlock come in
for the mournin’ bundle, and I gin it to him.
He said he couldn’t set down, but still he didn’t seem ready to go.
Everybody has such visitors that don’t want to go and don’t want to
stay, and you have to use head work to get ’em started either way.
Eben is different from his wife; he is more sincere and open-hearted,
and hain’t so affected. He speaks out more than she duz, and finally he
told us what wuz on his mind.
I see he had on a good new black overcoat, and the case wuz he wanted
to swop with Josiah for the day of the funeral, and take his old London
brown overcoat.
And I sez, “For the land’s sake! Why?”
“Wall,” sez he, a lookin’ real candid and sincere as he said it, “the
fact is, you know the corpse and I never agreed with each other, and
everybody knows it; and I don’t want to act as if I wuz a mournin’ too
much. I hate deceit,” sez he.
“Wall,” sez I, “if that is how you feel you can take the coat in
welcome.”
And Josiah sez, “Yes, of course you can have it.”
And Eben took off his glossy new black overcoat and put on Josiah’s
old shabby brown one and sot off. And I don’t know how he and his wife
settled it, and I don’t much care.
Wall, if you’ll believe it, Eben hadn’t much more’n got into his buggy
at the gate when Cousin John Richard began agin, took up his remarks
jest where he had laid ’em down. I don’t spoze he sensed Eben’s comin’
in hardly any.
I spoze it wuz some as if a fly should light on the nose of a Fourth
of July oritor, it would be brushed off without noticin’ it, and the
oration would go right on.
Sez John Richard, “All the religion and education in the world cannot
make the two races unite harmoniously and become one people, with
kindred tastes and united hearts and interests.”
Sez I agin, speakin’ mechanically, “You think the foot is too big for
the shoe?”
“Yes, exactly,” sez he. “The shoe is a good sound one, but the foot is
too big; it won’t go into it.”
“But,” sez I, “as Josiah remarked to you, wouldn’t it cost awfully?”
“Will it cost any less ten years from now? The colored population of
the South increases at the rate of five hundred every twenty-four hours.
“By the most careful estimates it has been found that in less than
twenty years the black race will outnumber the whites to the number
of a million. What will be done then? Will the white man leave this
country to make room for the negro? It is plain that there will not be
room for both.”
And I murmured almost entirely onbeknown to myself, “No, I don’t spoze
he would.”
“No, indeed,” sez Cousin John Richard. “The Anglo-Saxon will not leave
this country, his inheritance, for the sake of peace or to make room
for another race; then what will be done? I hear the voice of the
Lord,” sez John Richard solemnly, “I hear His voice saying, ‘Let my
people go.’” The silence seemed solemn; it seemed some like the pauses
that come in a protracted meetin’ between two powerful speakers. I felt
queer.
But I did speak up almost entirely onbeknown to myself, and sez I,
“Could they take care of themselves in a colony of their own? Do they
know enough?”
Sez John Richard, “A race that has accumulated property to the extent
of six millions of dollars in one Southern State since the war, under
all the well-nigh unendurable drawbacks and persecutions that have
beset it, will be able, I believe, to at least do as much, when these
hampering and oppressive influences are withdrawn and the colored
man has a clear field, in an atmosphere of strength and courage and
encouragement—where in this air of liberty he can enjoy the rewards of
his labor and behold the upbuilding of his race.
“And what a band of missionaries and teachers will go out from this new
republic, upon every side of them, in darkest Africa, to preach the
peaceful doctrine of the cross!
“In these same dark forests, where their ancestors were hewn down and
shot down like so many wild beasts, and dragged, maimed and bleeding,
to become burden bearers and chained slaves to an alien race—
“Under the same dim shadows of these lofty trees will these men stand
and reveal to the ignorant tribes the knowledge they learned in the
torturing school of slavery.
“The dark baptism wherewith they were baptized will set them apart and
fit them for this great work. They will speak with the fellowship of
suffering which touches hearts and enkindles holy flames.
“Their teachings will have the supreme consecration of agony and
martyrdom. They will speak with the pathos of grief, the earnestness
and knowledge born through suffering and ‘the constant anguish of
patience.’
“It is such agencies as these that God has always blessed to the
upbuilding of His kingdom. And will not the dwarfed natures about them
gradually be transformed by the teachings of these apostles into a
civilized, God-fearing people?
[Illustration: “THE DARK FACES OF THESE APOSTLES.”]
“Methinks the dark faces of these apostles will shine with the glowing
image of God’s love and providence—the providence that watched over
them and kept them in a strange land, and then brought them back in
safety, fitted to tell the story of God’s love and power, and His mercy
that had redeemed them and made them free.
“And when the lowest and most unknowing one shall ask, ‘Who are these?’
methinks the answer will be as it was to St. John: ‘These are they who
come out of great tribulations.’”
I wuz demute, and didn’t say nuthin’, and John Richard sez, in a deep
axent and a earnest one, “But will this Government be warned by past
judgments and past experience and be wise in time?
“I don’t know,” sez he, a answerin’ himself; for truly I didn’t know
what to say nor how to say it.
“You spoke just now of the expense. It will cost less now to avert
an evil than it will cost for its overthrow, when time, and national
follies, and men’s bad passions, and inevitable causes have matured it,
and the red cloud has burst in its livid fury over a doomed land. But
time will tell.
“But while delays go on, the mills of the gods are grinding on; time
nor tide cannot stop them. And if this nation sits down at its ease for
a decade longer, woe to this republic!”
I wuz so thrilled, and skairt, and enthused by Cousin John Richard’s
eloquence and strange and fiery words and flowery language that when I
sort o’ come to myself I looked up, a expectin’ to see Josiah bathed in
tears, for he weeps easy.
But even as I looked, I heard a low, peaceful snore. And I see that
Josiah Allen had so fur forgot good manners and what wuz due to high
principles and horspitality as to set there fast asleep. Yes, sleepin’
as sweet as a babe in its mother’s arms.
I looked mortified, I know.
But Cousin John Richard took it all historically—nuthin’ personal
could touch him, so it seemed.
And sez he to me. “There is a fair instance of what I have told you,
cousin—a plain illustration of the indifference and unbelief of the
North as to the state of affairs in the Southern States.”
“Wall,” sez I, “Josiah has been broke of his rest some durin’ the year
with newraligy, and you must overlook it in him.”
And, wantin’ to change the subject, I asked him if he wouldn’t like a
glass of new milk before retirin’ and goin’ to bed.
And he said he would; and I brung it in to him with a little plate of
crackers on a tray. And as I come by Josiah Allen I made calculation
ahead to hit him axidentally on his bald head with my elbow.
And he started up, with his face nearly covered with smiles and
mortification, and sez he:
“That last remark of yours, Cousin John Richard, wuz very convincin’
and eloquent.”
The remark wuz, “I like new milk very much.”
But I wouldn’t throw that milk into his face. And Cousin John received
the milk and the remark with composure.
And I kep’ them two men down on to relations, and sheep, and such like
subjects till I got ’em off to bed.
I give John Richard a good dose of spignut syrup, for he complained of
a sore throat, and he wuz hoarse as a frog. Good land! I should have
thought he would be, talkin’ as much as he had, and eloquent too.
Eloquence is dretful tuckerin’; I know well its effects on the system,
though mebby I hadn’t ort to be the one to say it.
Wall, in the mornin’ Cousin John Richard wuz weak as a cat. All tired
out. He couldn’t hardly get round. And I made him lay down on the
lounge in the settin’ room, and I give him spignut syrup once a hour
most all day, and kep’ him warm, and lumps of maple sugar for his cough.
And by night he seemed like a new man—that spignut syrup is wonderful;
few people know the properties of it.
Wall, Josiah and I both took such a likin’ to that good onselfish
eloquent creeter that we prevailed on him to stay a week with us right
along.
And we took him to see the children, and Josiah took him up to Uncle
Thomas’es, and Cousin Sophronia’s on his own side, and we done well by
him.
And I fixed up his clothes with Philury’s help—they wuz good ones, but
they needed a woman. But we mended ’em and rubbed ’em up with ammonia
where it wuz needed, and they wuz in good condition when he went back
to his work.
Good land! wild oxen, nor camels, nor nuthin’ couldn’t have kep’ him
from that “field” of hisen.
But when it come the mornin’ for him to leave, he hated to go—hated to
like a dog.
And we hated to have him go, we liked him the best that ever wuz. And
we tried to make him promise to come to see us agin. But he seemed to
feel dubersome about it; he said he would have to go where his work
called him.
His bizness now up North wuz to see about some money that had been
subscribed for a freedmen’s school and meetin’ house. But he promised
to write to us now and then, and he spoke with deep feelin’ about the
“sweet rest he had had there,” and how he never should forget it; he
talked real eloquent about it, and flowery, but he meant every word, we
could see he did.
It happened curius about the chapter Josiah read that mornin’—he most
always reads the first one he opens to. And it wuz the one where Paul
tells about his hard work and trials, and how the Lord had brought him
out of ’em all.
How he wuz beaten with rods, and stuned, and wuz in perils of waters,
and perils by his own countrymen, and perils by the heathen, and in the
wilderness, and amongst false brethren, in weariness, and painfulness,
and hunger and thirst, and cold and nakedness.
And how he gloried in his weakness and infirmities, if so God’s
strength should be made perfect and His will be accomplished.
I declare for it, I couldn’t help thinkin’ of Cousin John Richard,
though mebby it hain’t right to compare one of our relations to Paul,
and then agin I didn’t spoze Paul would care. I knew they both on ’em
wuz good, faithful, earnest creeters anyway.
Then Cousin John Richard prayed a prayer that almost caught us up to
the gates of Paradise, it wuz so full of heavenly love, and tenderness,
and affection for us, and devotion to his work, and everything good,
and half saintly.
And then most imegiatly he went away on the mornin’ stage.
And at the very last, when most every other man would be a thinkin’ of
umberells or shawl straps, he took our hands in hisen and sez:
“Stand fast in the faith! be strong!” And then he bid us “good-bye, and
God bless us!” and wuz gone.
Good, faithful, hard-workin’ creeter. The views he had promulgated to
us wuz new and startlin’, and Josiah and he couldn’t agree on ’em; but
where is there two folks who think alike on every subject?
But whether they wuz true or false, I knew that John Richard believed
every word he had said about the state of affairs in the South.
[Illustration: “WITH PHILURY’S HELP.”]