ROBERT JOHNSON'S PROMOTION AND RELIGION.
Robert Johnson, being able to meet the army requirements, was enlisted
as a substitute to help fill out the quota of a Northern regiment. With
his intelligence, courage, and prompt obedience, he rose from the ranks
and became lieutenant of a colored company. He was daring, without being
rash; prompt, but not thoughtless; firm, without being harsh. Kind and
devoted to the company he drilled, he soon won the respect of his
superior officers and the love of his comrades.
"Johnson," said a young officer, Captain Sybil, of Maine, who had become
attached to Robert, "what is the use of your saying you're a colored
man, when you are as white as I am, and as brave a man as there is among
us. Why not quit this company, and take your place in the army just the
same as a white man? I know your chances for promotion would be better."
"Captain, you may doubt my word, but to-day I would rather be a
lieutenant in my company than a captain in yours."
"I don't understand you."
"Well, Captain, when a man's been colored all his life it comes a little
hard for him to get white all at once. Were I to try it, I would feel
like a cat in a strange garret. Captain, I think my place is where I am
most needed. You do not need me in your ranks, and my company does.
They are excellent fighters, but they need a leader. To silence a
battery, to capture a flag, to take a fortification, they will rush into
the jaws of death."
"Yes, I have often wondered at their bravery."
"Captain, these battles put them on their mettle. They have been so long
taught that they are nothing and nobody, that they seem glad to prove
they are something and somebody."
"But, Johnson, you do not look like them, you do not talk like them. It
is a burning shame to have held such a man as you in slavery."
"I don't think it was any worse to have held me in slavery than the
blackest man in the South."
"You are right, Johnson. The color of a man's skin has nothing to do
with the possession of his rights."
"Now, there is Tom Anderson," said Robert, "he is just as black as black
can be. He has been bought and sold like a beast, and yet there is not a
braver man in all the company. I know him well. He is a noble-hearted
fellow. True as steel. I love him like a brother. And I believe Tom
would risk his life for me any day. He don't know anything about his
father or mother. He was sold from them before he could remember. He can
read a little. He used to take lessons from a white gardener in
Virginia. He would go between the hours of 9 P.M. and 4 A.M. He got a
book of his own, tore it up, greased the pages, and hid them in his hat.
Then if his master had ever knocked his hat off he would have thought
them greasy papers, and not that Tom was carrying his library on his
head. I had another friend who lived near us. When he was nineteen
years old he did not know how many letters there were in the ABC's. One
night, when his work was done, his boss came into his cabin and saw him
with a book in his hand. He threatened to give him five hundred lashes
if he caught him again with a book, and said he hadn't work enough to
do. He was getting out logs, and his task was ten logs a day. His
employer threatened to increase it to twelve. He said it just harassed
him; it set him on fire. He thought there must be something good in that
book if the white man didn't want him to learn. One day he had an errand
in the kitchen, and he heard one of the colored girls going over the
ABC's. Here was the key to the forbidden knowledge. She had heard the
white children saying them, and picked them up by heart, but did not
know them by sight. He was not content with that, but sold his cap for a
book and wore a cloth on his head instead. He got the sounds of the
letters by heart, then cut off the bark of a tree, carved the letters on
the smooth inside, and learned them. He wanted to learn how to write. He
had charge of a warehouse where he had a chance to see the size and form
of letters. He made the beach of the river his copybook, and thus he
learned to write. Tom never got very far with his learning, but I used
to get the papers and tell him all I knew about the war."
"How did you get the papers?"
"I used to have very good privileges for a slave. All of our owners were
not alike. Some of them were quite clever, and others were worse than
git out. I used to get the morning papers to sell to the boarders and
others, and when I got them I would contrive to hide a paper, and let
some of the fellow-servants know how things were going on. And our
owners thought we cared nothing about what was going on."
"How was that? I thought you were not allowed to hold meetings unless a
white man were present."
"That was so. But we contrived to hold secret meetings in spite of their
caution. We knew whom we could trust. My ole Miss wasn't mean like some
of them. She never wanted the patrollers around prowling in our cabins,
and poking their noses into our business. Her husband was an awful
drunkard. He ran through every cent he could lay his hands on, and she
was forced to do something to keep the wolf from the door, so she set up
a boarding-house. But she didn't take in Tom, Dick, and Harry. Nobody
but the big bugs stopped with her. She taught me to read and write, and
to cast up accounts. It was so handy for her to have some one who could
figure up her accounts, and read or write a note, if she were from home
and wanted the like done. She once told her cousin how I could write and
figure up. And what do you think her cousin said?"
"'Pleased,' I suppose, 'to hear it.'"
"Not a bit of it. She said, if I belonged to her, she would cut off my
thumbs; her husband said, 'Oh, then he couldn't pick cotton.' As to my
poor thumbs, it did not seem to be taken into account what it would cost
me to lose them. My ole Miss used to have a lot of books. She would let
me read any one of them except a novel. She wanted to take care of my
soul, but she wasn't taking care of her own."
"Wasn't she religious?"
"She went for it. I suppose she was as good as most of them. She said
her prayers and went to church, but I don't know that that made her any
better. I never did take much stock in white folks' religion."
"Why, Robert, I'm afraid you are something of an infidel."
"No, Captain, I believe in the real, genuine religion. I ain't got much
myself, but I respect them that have. We had on our place a dear, old
saint, named Aunt Kizzy. She was a happy soul. She had seen hard times,
but was what I call a living epistle. I've heard her tell how her only
child had been sold from her, when the man who bought herself did not
want to buy her child. Poor little fellow! he was only two years old. I
asked her one day how she felt when her child was taken away. 'I felt,'
she said, 'as if I was going to my grave. But I knew if I couldn't get
justice here, I could get it in another world.'"
"That was faith," said Captain Sybil, as if speaking to himself, "a
patient waiting for death to redress the wrongs of life."
"Many a time," continued Robert, "have I heard her humming to herself in
the kitchen and saying, 'I has my trials, ups and downs, but it won't
allers be so. I specs one day to wing and wing wid de angels,
Hallelujah! Den I specs to hear a voice sayin', "Poor ole Kizzy, she's
done de bes' she kin. Go down, Gabriel, an' tote her in." Den I specs to
put on my golden slippers, my long white robe, an' my starry crown, an'
walk dem golden streets, Hallelujah!' I've known that dear, old soul to
travel going on two miles, after her work was done, to have some one
read to her. Her favorite chapter began with, 'Let not your heart be
troubled, ye believe in God, believe also in Me.'"
"I have been deeply impressed," said Captain Sybil, "with the child-like
faith of some of these people. I do not mean to say that they are
consistent Christians, but I do think that this faith has in a measure
underlain the life of the race. It has been a golden thread woven amid
the sombre tissues of their lives. A ray of light shimmering amid the
gloom of their condition. And what would they have been without it?"
"I don't know. But I know what she was with it. And I believe if there
are any saints in glory, Aunt Kizzy is one of them."
"She is dead, then?"
"Yes, went all right, singing and rejoicing until the last,
'Troubles over, troubles over, and den my troubles will be over. We'll
walk de golden streets all 'roun' in de New Jerusalem.' Now, Captain,
that's the kind of religion that I want. Not that kind which could ride
to church on Sundays, and talk so solemn with the minister about heaven
and good things, then come home and light down on the servants like a
thousand of bricks. I have no use for it. I don't believe in it. I never
did and I never will. If any man wants to save my soul he ain't got to
beat my body. That ain't the kind of religion I'm looking for. I ain't
got a bit of use for it. Now, Captain, ain't I right?"
"Well, yes, Robert, I think you are more than half right. You ought to
know my dear, old mother who lives in Maine. We have had colored company
at our house, and I never saw her show the least difference between her
colored and white guests. She is a Quaker preacher, and don't believe
in war, but when the rest of the young men went to the front, I wanted
to go also. So I thought it all over, and there seemed to be no way out
of slavery except through the war. I had been taught to hate war and
detest slavery. Now the time had come when I could not help the war, but
I could strike a blow for freedom. So I told my mother I was going to
the front, that I expected to be killed, but I went to free the slave.
It went hard with her. But I thought that I ought to come, and I believe
my mother's prayers are following me."
"Captain," said Robert, rising, "I am glad that I have heard your story.
I think that some of these Northern soldiers do two things--hate slavery
and hate niggers."
"I am afraid that is so with some of them. They would rather be whipped
by Rebels than conquer with negroes. Oh, I heard a soldier," said
Captain Sybil, "say, when the colored men were being enlisted, that he
would break his sword and resign. But he didn't do either. After Colonel
Shaw led his charge at Fort Wagner, and died in the conflict, he got
bravely over his prejudices. The conduct of the colored troops there and
elsewhere has done much to turn public opinion in their favor. I suppose
any white soldier would rather have his black substitute receive the
bullets than himself."