ABOUT half a mile from Belle Fanchon, on the road that led to Eden
Centre, stood a little tumble-down cottage where an old colored woman
lived with her granddaughter and grandson.
Cleopatra, shortened into Aunt Clo’, wuz picturesque-lookin’ even in her
rags. She wuz taller by far than common wimmen, with a portly figure,
that did not show any marks of privation, although it wuz difficult to
tell what the family lived on, for it wuz the exception instead of the
rule to see any one of ’em employed in any useful labor.
Once in a great while Aunt Clo’ would go out for a day’s work washin’ or
cleanin’ house, or any other work she could perform.
At such times, although she professed to have great “misery” in her
back, her arms, her legs, and, in fact, “all her bones,” yet she did a
good day’s work, but with groanings scarcely to be uttered.
She always seemed serenely gracious in receivin’ anything that Maggie
gave her, evidently considerin’ it wuz only her due.
But although her day’s works wuz exceedingly unfrequent, and her
granddaughter Rosy and the boy Abe wuz hardly ever seen to perform any
labor, yet they showed no signs of starvation, certainly.
As a reason for this state of things the neighbors’ hen-roosts and
corn-fields might have given evidence.
[Illustration:
CLEOPATRA.
]
Rosy, the young granddaughter, wuz utterly without morals of any savin’
kind. She wuz rather pretty for a full-blooded African. A empty-headed,
gigglin’, utterly depraved study in black.
Not one of the family could read or write, or hardly tell the time of
day. Two large dogs formed part of their household, and they seemingly
possessed more intelligence than either of the human residents.
Rosy used often to come to Maggie’s kitchen to ask for things they
wanted. For one peculiarity of this family wuz that they seemed only
serenely performin’ their duty when they begged for anything they
wanted.
One day, as she sot before me arrayed in cheap, dirty finery, I said to
her:
“Rosy, can you read or write?”
“No, missy.”
“Wouldn’t you like to learn to?”
“I d’no, missy.”
“There is a colored school only a little ways from here, where a good
many of your people are learnin’ to be good scholars. Why don’t you go
to it?”
“I d’no, missy.”
“If you will go I will give you the books you will want. Will you go if
I will get them for you?”
“Yes, missy.”
A most unblushin’ falsehood, as I learned afterwards. For she sold the
books as soon as I gave them to her at the little store at the Corners,
sold them for a string of yellow glass beads and a cheap cotton lace
collar.
And when I taxed her with this, she denied it at once.
And when I told her that I saw the books at the store myself, she said
she had lost the books on her way to school, and the beads and collar
had been given her.
“’Fore de Lawd dey had.”
What could any one do with such ignorance, and falsehood, and utter lack
of principle?
And as Maggie said, “The South is overrun with just such characters as
these.”
Not all of them about there wuz so, she said, not by any means; some of
them wuz earnest Christians, good scholars, good inhabitants.
But thousands and thousands of those who wuz slaves, bred to concealment
and lies in self-defence, taught all kinds of vice by the system under
which they wuz born and nurtured, seem to have no sense of what is right
and what is wrong; they will steal with no compunction of conscience;
lie when the truth would serve them better; will only work when
compelled to, and are low and depraved every way.
“What is to be done with them?” sez I. And Maggie said and I thought
there wuz but one answer to this, wherever they be, for movin’ their
bodies round won’t purify their souls to once nor quicken their
intellects imegiatly.
Give them the Bible, teach them, arouse them from the dark sleep of sin
and ignorance, learn them to stand upright and then to walk.
Givin’ such men the right to vote and control by their greater numbers
the educated race is as simple as it would be to set a baby that had
never took a step to runnin’ a race for a prize with an athlete.
The baby has got to stand on its feet first, get a little strength in
its soft, unused muscles, then it has got to learn to walk, then to run,
and so on; after long patience and teachin’, it can mebby win its race
by runnin’ and leapin’; but not at first, not before it can creep.
Why, for a time after I first went South things looked so new and
strange to me, and my daughter Maggie wuz so firm in her belief, that I
seemed to think jest as she did, and we would talk for hours and hours,
and agree jest as well as two human creeters could agree. And I guess I
even outdone her in drawin’ metafors, and drawin’ ’em to great
distances, as my way is.
For I am always one to speak out and tell how things look to me to-day;
if they look different to-morrow under the light of some different
knowledge, why, then I’ll speak out agin and tell that when the time
comes.
And some of these beliefs Maggie and I promulgated to each other, I
believe now jest as strong as I did then, and some of my idees got sort
o’ modified down in the course of time. Of this more and anon.
But then Maggie would talk to me, and I’d say to Maggie:
Why, lettin’ such ignorant and onexperienced men rule the country, rule
free, educated, cultured men and wimmen, is as foolish as it would be to
put a blind man onto a wild, onbroke horse, and tell him to guide it
safe when it wuz led right along by pits, and canyons, and kasems and
helpless ones and infants are layin’ right in its path, and lots of
mean, ugly creeters ready to ketch holt of the bits and back him off out
of their way.
Why, that blind man couldn’t do it. Why? because he hain’t got any eyes,
that is why.
He don’t know which line to pull on, for he hain’t got no eyes to see
which way the danger lays, nor which side on him folks are a layin’ in
his track.
He hain’t to blame, that blind man hain’t, nor the horse hain’t to
blame, nor the helpless ones he is a tromplin’ over and a stompin’ and a
kickin’.
“Who is to blame?” Why, the ones that lifted him onto the horse.
Wall, say some, the blind man wuz lifted onto the horse in the first
place to get him out of danger; he wuz jest on the pint of sinkin’ down
into the deep mud and quicksand; he wuz lifted onto the horse as a war
measure, a way of safety to him out of his danger.
Wall, I sez, that wuz all right; I presume they thought the horse could
bear him out safely amongst the pitfalls a layin’ on every side of him,
and I dare presume to say they didn’t realize that the man wuz so blind,
or that so many wuz goin’ to be trompled on by the heels of the horse.
But now, I say, they have gin it a fair trial, they see it didn’t work;
they see that a blind man can’t ride a wild horse over a dangerous road
with safety to himself, or the horse, or the helpless ones in his way.
“Wall, what will you do?” you say.
Wall, Maggie spozed the case, and I did; we said, spozin’ the ones that
lifted that blind man up onto the horse should take him off on it a
spell as easy as they could, so’s not to hurt his feelin’s, and then go
to doctorin’ the man’s eyes, to try to get him so he can see; hold the
horse for him till he can see; curb the horse down so it will go
smoother some; encourage the man by tellin’ him the truth that you are a
keepin’ the horse for him, and he is a goin’ to get up onto him agin and
ride him as soon as he can see, and the sooner he gets his eyesight the
sooner he can ride.
[Illustration:
ROSY.
]
Give him the sure cure for his blindness, and then if he won’t lay holt
and cure himself, let him go afoot as long as the world stands.
Give the black man and the poor whites plenty of means for study and
self-improvement. Give them the Bible and good schools, plenty of
religious and seckular teachers, and I believe they will improve, will
become safe guides to foller and to guide themselves, whether in this
land or in another, wherever their future may lay.
Sez Thomas Jefferson: “The same rule would work well to the North as
well as the South.”
“Heaven knows it would,” sez I. It hain’t becomin’ in us to cast motes
and forget beams. Heaven knows that our criminals, and paupers, and
drunkards, and the foreign convicts and jail-birds landed on our shores
are not safe gardeens to trust our life and liberties to.
This mass of ignorance and vice, native and foreign, that swarms to the
polls, bought for a measure of whiskey, ought to be dealt with in the
same way.
Men who can’t read the names on the ballots can’t see deep enough into
the urena of political life to be safe guides to foller, to be safe
gardeens to the helpless wimmen and children committed to their care.
Liberty is too priceless a jewel to be committed into such vile hands,
such weak hands, hands that would and do barter it away to the highest
bidder.
Liberty and Freedom sold for a glass of beer. The right of suffrage, the
patent of our American nobility, to be squandered and degraded for a
pipeful of tobacco. The idee!
And kneelin’ in churches, sez I, and settin’ apart in their own homes
are royal souls, grand, educated lovers of their country and their kind,
who would for duty’s sake reach out one hand to take the ballot, and
cling with the other to the cross of the Crucified.
Them who have agonized over the woes and wrongs of the world, and tried
with anointed vision to find out the true wisdom of life and right
livin’—have spent their whole noble lives for the good of poor humanity—
They must kneel on in silence, and stay in seclusion, and see the
freedom of their children and the children of humanity bought and sold,
and sunk in the dirt, and trailed in the mire by them who have never
given a thought to righteousness and right livin’.
The black man would never have been freed from his chains of bondage had
not a necessity arisen. God’s great opportunity comes on down the ages;
let us be ready for it. He sees wrongs, and woes, and incomparable
sufferings plead to Him for redress.
The heavens are very still. The prayin’ ones hear no reply to their
tears, their lamentations, their despairin’ cries.
The heavens are very calm, and blue, and fur away.
But at last man’s necessity, God’s great opportunity comes; the
oppressors are driven into some corner by their own deeds, till the only
way for them to get out in safety is to answer the prayers of centuries
and let the oppressed go free.
Man’s necessity has come; they endure plague after plague, and depend on
their own strength and keep up their own proud wills, and harden their
hearts, and refuse to answer the pleadings of justice.
But bimeby the plagues increase, their troubles grow greater and
greater, they encompass them about, there is no way out only to liberate
the great throng that stands between them and safety. And bimeby, when
there is a dead one in every house, and weepin’ is on every side, and
the mourners go about the street, and the mountains are behind, and the
sea in front, and there is no way out only to liberate the oppressed,
why, then there is a “military necessity.”
God’s opportunity has come. Rather than perish themselves they will let
justice be done, let the oppressed go free.
Now, here is another Egypt. A long-oppressed, ignorant race is set up
too sudden as a ruler over an educated, intelligent, intolerant one, for
in many places the white race is in the minority.
But it will not yield to the misrule of ignorance.
The white people are bitter, arrogant, and oppressive under their new
conditions.
The blacks, nursin’ their old and new wrongs, are burnin’ for vengeance
on their oppressors. They will not suffer much longer and be still.
A great struggle is impendin’. I spoze the Nation thinks—and it is
naterel for anybody to think—that the black vote cannot be put down
legally sence the right of suffrage wuz gin ’em. They think it couldn’t
be taken from them for a long time without a war followin’; they think
they would fight their way to the poles, and it would seem naterel that
they should, sez I, and so sez Maggie.
“Then what can be done?” sez Maggie; and then wuz the time that I sez,
and I felt real riz up when I sez it:
There is one thing that might be _tried_—give the ballot to the white
women of the South, and to the black women too, if they can come up to
the standpoint of intelligence. Let a certain amount of education and
intelligence be the qualification to the ballot.
This is your peaceful passin’ through the Red Sea of the present. The
waves may stand up pretty high on each side; loud talk, and fears for
womanly modesty, fears for man’s supremacy, fears for the dignity of the
ballot will blow up pretty high waves on both sides.
But, sez I solemnly, if the Lord is the Leader, if He stands in front of
the army, and it is His hand that beckons us forward, and He who passes
over in front of the army, we shall pass through in safety, and the
nation will be saved.
The supremacy will remain in the hands of the educated men and women of
the South till the illiterates become safe leaders to themselves and
others by education and the civilizing influences of the Bible and good
teachers.
The supremacy would be taken out of the whiskey bathed hands of the
loafer rabble in Northern cities, and remain in the safer hands of
educated men and women, till the lower classes rise up by the same safe
means of education and enlightenment, when they too will become safe
leaders and teachers of the best. And I sez, How will this Nation find
any safer means, any fairer way?
It offers safety to the imperilled present, it offers a hope, an
incentive for the strugglin’ future.
The poorest boy and the poorest girl would have this hope, this
incentive to learn—for the royal road is free for all, beggar or child
of wealth. The path opens right up from the alley to the President’s
chair, from the tenement to the Capitol, jest as sure as from the
mansion house or the university.
It is safe another way, so it seems to me, because it is right and just.
Justice may seem to lead through strange ways sometimes—thorny roads,
steep and rugged mounts, and deep, dark wildernesses, while the path of
expedience and pleasant selfishness may seem to open up a flowery way.
But every time, every single time, Justice is the safe one to foller.
And it is she who will lead you out into a safe place, while the rosy
clouds that hang over the path of selfish expedience will anon, or even
sooner, turn black, and lower down, and close up the way in darkness and
despair.
This seems to me a safe way for the imperilled South while it is passin’
through this crisis, and the light shines jest as fair and fresh in the
newer day that gleams in the distance. It is shinin’ in the eyes of them
that see fur off, fair and beautiful, the New Republic, where there are
equal rights, educated suffrage, co-operative labor. Oh! blessed land
beyend the swellin’ waves of the unquiet Present!
Genieve sees it plain, and so duz Victor. And thousands and thousands of
the educated and morally riz up of the colored race see it to-day, and
are a strivin’ towards it.
[Illustration:
“HE WUZ GLAD TO SET DOWN.”
]
------------------------------------------------------------------------