"What then? Whiskey?" jeered Kirby, with a coarse laugh.
Wolfe was silent a moment, thinking.
"I dunno," he said, with a bewildered look. "It mebbe. Summat to make
her live, I think,--like you. Whiskey ull do it, in a way."
The young man laughed again. Mitchell flashed a look of disgust
somewhere,--not at Wolfe.
"May," he broke out impatiently, "are you blind? Look at that woman's
face! It asks questions of God, and says, 'I have a right to know.' Good
God, how hungry it is!"
They looked a moment; then May turned to the mill-owner:--
"Have you many such hands as this? What are you going to do with them?
Keep them at puddling iron?"
Kirby shrugged his shoulders. Mitchell's look had irritated him.
"_Ce n'est pas mon affaire_. I have no fancy for nursing infant
geniuses. I suppose there are some stray gleams of mind and soul among
these wretches. The Lord will take care of his own; or else they can
work out their own salvation. I have heard you call our American system
a ladder which any man can scale. Do you doubt it? Or perhaps you want
to banish all social ladders, and put us all on a flat table-land,--eh,
May?"
The Doctor looked vexed, puzzled. Some terrible problem lay hid in this
woman's face, and troubled these men. Kirby waited for an answer, and,
receiving none, went on, warning with his subject.
"I tell you, there's something wrong that no talk of '_Liberté_' or
'_Egalité_' will do away. If I had the making of men, these men who
do the lowest part of the world's work should be machines,--nothing
more,--hands. It would be kindness. God help them! What are taste,
reason, to creatures who must live such lives as that?" He pointed to
Deborah, sleeping on the ash-heap. "So many nerves to sting them to
pain. What if God had put your brain, with all its agony of touch, into
your fingers, and bid you work and strike with that?"
"You think you could govern the world better?" laughed the Doctor.
"I do not think at all."
"That is true philosophy. Drift with the stream, because you cannot dive
deep enough to find bottom, eh?"
"Exactly," rejoined Kirby. "I do not think. I wash my hands of all
social problems,--slavery, caste, white or black. My duty to my
operatives has a narrow limit,--the pay-hour on Saturday night. Outside
of that, if they cut korl, or cut each other's throats, (the more
popular amusement of the two,) I am not responsible."
The Doctor sighed,--a good honest sigh, from the depths of his stomach.
"God help us! Who is responsible?"
"Not I, I tell you," said Kirby, testily. "What has the man who pays
them money to do with their souls' concerns, more than the grocer or
butcher who takes it?"
"And yet," said Mitchell's cynical voice, "look at her! How hungry she
is!"
Kirby tapped his boot with his cane. No one spoke. Only the dumb face of
the rough image looking into their faces with the awful question, "What
shall we do to be saved?" Only Wolfe's face, with its heavy weight of
brain, its weak, uncertain mouth, its desperate eyes, out of which
looked the soul of his class,--only Wolfe's face turned towards Kirby's.
Mitchell laughed,--a cool, musical laugh.
"Money has spoken!" he said, seating himself lightly on a stone with the
air of an amused spectator at a play. "Are you answered?"--turning to
Wolfe his clear, magnetic face.
Bright and deep and cold as Arctic air, the soul of the man lay tranquil
beneath. He looked at the furnace-tender as he had looked at a rare
mosaic in the morning; only the man was the more amusing study of the
two.
"Are you answered? Why, May, look at him! '_De profundis clamavi_.' Or,
to quote in English, 'Hungry and thirsty, his soul faints in him.' And
so Money sends back its answer into the depths through you, Kirby!
Very clear the answer, too!--I think I remember reading the same words
somewhere:--washing your hands in Eau de Cologne, and saying, 'I am
innocent of the blood of this man. See ye to it!'"
Kirby flushed angrily.
"You quote Scripture freely."
"Do I not quote correctly? I think I remember another line, which may
amend my meaning: 'Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these,
ye did it unto me.' Deist? Bless you, man, I was raised on the milk of
the Word. Now, Doctor, the pocket of the world having uttered its
voice, what has the heart to say? You are a philanthropist, in a small
way,--_n'est ce pas_? Here, boy, this gentleman can show you how to cut
korl better,--or your destiny. Go on, May!"
"I think a mocking devil possesses you to-night," rejoined the Doctor,
seriously.
He went to Wolfe and put his hand kindly on his arm. Something of a
vague idea possessed the Doctor's brain that much good was to be done
here by a friendly word or two: a latent genius to be warmed into life
by a waited-for sunbeam. Here it was: he had brought it. So he went on
complacently:--
"Do you know, boy, you have it in you to be a great sculptor, a great
man?--do you understand?" (talking down to the capacity of his hearer:
it is a way people have with children, and men like Wolfe,)--"to live a
better, stronger life than I, or Mr. Kirby here? A man may make himself
anything he chooses. God has given you stronger powers than many
men,--me, for instance."
May stopped, heated, glowing with his own magnanimity. And it was
magnanimous. The puddler had drunk in every word, looking through the
Doctor's flurry, and generous heat, and self-approval, into his will,
with those slow, absorbing eyes of his.
"Make yourself what you will. It is your right."
"I know," quietly. "Will you help me?"
Mitchell laughed again. The Doctor turned now, in a passion,--
"You know, Mitchell, I have not the means. You know, if I had, it is in
my heart to take this boy and educate him for"----
"The glory of God, and the glory of John May."
May did not speak for a moment; then, controlled, he said,--
"Why should one be raised, when myriads are left?--I have not the money,
boy," to Wolfe, shortly.
"Money?" He said it over slowly, as one repeals the guessed answer to a
riddle, doubtfully. "That is it? Money?"
"Yes, money,--that is it," said Mitchell, rising, and drawing his
furred coat about him. "You've found the cure for all the world's
diseases.--Come, May, find your good-humor, and come home. This damp
wind chills my very bones. Come and preach your Saint-Simonian doctrines
to-morrow to Kirby's hands. Let them have a clear idea of the rights of
the soul, and I'll venture next week they'll strike for higher wages.
That will be the end of it."
"Will you send the coach-driver to this side of the mills?" asked Kirby,
turning to Wolfe.
He spoke kindly: it was his habit to do so. Deborah, seeing the puddler
go, crept after him. The three men waited outside. Doctor May walked up
and down, chafed. Suddenly he stopped.
"Go back, Mitchell! You say the pocket and the heart of the world speak
without meaning to these people. What has its head to say? Taste,
culture, refinement? Go!"
Mitchell was leaning against a brick wall. He turned his head
indolently, and looked into the mills. There hung about the place a
thick, unclean odor. The slightest motion of his hand marked that he
perceived it, and his insufferable disgust. That was all. May said
nothing, only quickened his angry tramp.
"Besides," added Mitchell, giving a corollary to his answer, "it would
be of no use. I am not one of them."
"You do not mean"--said May, facing him.
"Yes, I mean just that. Reform is born of need, not pity. No vital
movement of the people's has worked down, for good or evil; fermented,
instead, carried up the heaving, cloggy mass. Think back through
history, and you will know it. What will this lowest deep--thieves,
Magdalens, negroes--do with the light filtered through ponderous Church
creeds, Baconian theories, Goethe schemes? Some day, out of their bitter
need will be thrown up their own light-bringer,--their Jean Paul, their
Cromwell, their Messiah."
"Bah!" was the Doctor's inward criticism. However, in practice, he
adopted the theory; for, when, night and morning, afterwards, he prayed
that power might be given these degraded souls to rise, he glowed at
heart, recognizing an accomplished duty.
Wolfe and the woman had stood in the shadow of the works as the coach
drove off. The Doctor had held out his hand in a frank, generous way,
telling him to "take care of himself, and to remember it was his right
to rise." Mitchell had simply touched his hat, as to an equal, with a
quiet look of thorough recognition. Kirby had thrown Deborah some money,
which she found, and clutched eagerly enough. They were gone now, all
of them. The man sat down on the cinder-road, looking up into the murky
sky.
"'T be late, Hugh. Wunnot hur come?"
He shook his head doggedly, and the woman crouched out of his sight
against the wall. Do you remember rare moments when a sudden
light flashed over yourself, your world, God? when you stood on a
mountain-peak, seeing your life as it might have been, as it is? one
quick instant, when custom lost its force and every-day usage? when your
friend, wife, brother, stood in a new light? your soul was bared, and
the grave,--a foretaste of the nakedness of the Judgment-Day? So it came
before him, his life, that night. The slow tides of pain he had borne
gathered themselves up and surged against his soul. His squalid daily
life, the brutal coarseness eating into his brain, as the ashes into
his skin: before, these things had been a dull aching into his
consciousness; to-night, they were reality. He griped the filthy red
shirt that clung, stiff with soot, about him, and tore it savagely from
his arm. The flesh beneath was muddy with grease and ashes,--and the
heart beneath that! And the soul? God knows.
Then flashed before his vivid poetic sense the man who had left
him,--the pure face, the delicate, sinewy limbs, in harmony with all he
knew of beauty or truth. In his cloudy fancy he had pictured a Something
like this. He had found it in this Mitchell, even when he idly scoffed
at his pain: a Man all-knowing, all-seeing, crowned by Nature,
reigning,--the keen glance of his eye falling like a sceptre on other
men. And yet his instinct taught him that he too--He! He looked at
himself with sudden loathing, sick, wrung his hands with a cry, and then
was silent. With all the phantoms of his heated, ignorant fancy, Wolfe
had not been vague in his ambitious. They were practical, slowly built
up before him out of his knowledge of what he could do. Through years
he had day by day made this hope a real thing to himself,--a clear,
projected figure of himself, as he might become.
Able to speak, to know what was best, to raise these men and women
working at his side up with him: sometimes he forgot this defined hope
in the frantic anguish to escape,--only to escape,--out of the wet, the
pain, the ashes, somewhere, anywhere,--only for one moment of free air
on a hill-side, to lie down and let his sick soul throb itself out in
the sunshine. But to-night he panted for life. The savage strength of
his nature was roused; his cry was fierce to God for justice.
"Look at me!" he said to Deborah, with a low, bitter laugh, striking his
puny chest savagely. "What am I worth, Deb? Is it my fault that I am no
better? My fault? My fault?"
He stopped, stung with a sudden remorse, seeing her hunchback shape
writhing with sobs. For Deborah was crying thankless tears, according to
the fashion of women.
"God forgi' me, woman! Things go harder wi' you nor me. It's a worse
share."
He got up and helped her to rise; and they went doggedly down the muddy
street, side by side.
"It's all wrong," he muttered, slowly,--"all wrong! I dunnot
understan'. But it'll end some day."
"Come home, Hugh!" she said, coaxingly; for he had stopped, looking
around bewildered.
"Home,--and back to the mill!" He went on saying this over to himself,
as if he would mutter down every pain in this dull despair.
She followed him through the fog, her blue lips chattering with cold.
They reached the cellar at last. Old Wolfe had been drinking since she
went out, and had crept nearer the door. The girl Janey slept heavily In
the corner. He went up to her, touching softly the worn white arm with
his fingers. Some bitterer thought stung him, as he stood there. He
wiped the drops from his forehead, and went into the room beyond, livid,
trembling. A hope, trifling, perhaps, but very dear, had died just then
out of the poor puddler's life, as he looked at the sleeping, innocent
girl,--some plan for the future, in which she had borne a part. He gave
it up that moment, then and forever. Only a trifle, perhaps, to us: his
face grew a shade paler,--that was all. But, somehow, the man's soul, as
God and the angels looked down on it, never was the same afterwards.
Deborah followed him into the inner room. She carried a candle, which
she placed on the floor, dosing the door after her. She had seen the
look on his face, as he turned away: her own grew deadly. Yet, as she
came up to him, her eyes glowed. He was seated on an old chest, quiet,
holding his face in his hands.
"Hugh!" she said, softly.
He did not speak.
"Hugh, did hur hear what the man said,--him with the clear voice? Did
hur hear? Money, money,--that it wud do all?"
He pushed her away,--gently, but he was worn out; her rasping tone
fretted him.
"Hugh!"
The candle flared a pale yellow light over the cobwebbed brick walls,
and the woman standing there. He looked at her. She was young, in deadly
earnest; her faded eyes, and wet, ragged figure caught from their
frantic eagerness a power akin to beauty.
"Hugh, it is true! Money ull do it! Oh, Hugh, boy, listen till me! He
said it true! It is money!"
"I know. Go back! I do not want you here."
"Hugh, it is t' last time. I 'II never worrit hur again."
There were tears in her voice now, but she choked them back.
"Hear till me only to-night! If one of t' witch people wud come, them we
heard of t' home, and gif hur all hur wants, what then? Say, Hugh!"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean money.".
Her whisper shrilled through his brain.
"If one of t' witch dwarfs wud come from t' lane moors to-night, and gif
hur money, to go out,--_out_, I say,--out, lad, where t' sun shines, and
t' heath grows, and t' ladies walk in silken gownds, and God stays all
t' time,--where t' man lives that talked to us to-night,--Hugh knows,
--Hugh could walk there like a king!"
He thought the woman mad, tried to check her, but she went on, fierce in
her eager haste.
"If _I_ were t' witch dwarf, if I had f money, wud hur thank me? Wud hur
take me out o' this place wid hur and Janey? I wud not come into the
gran' house hur wud build, to vex hur wid t' hunch,--only at night, when
t' shadows were dark, stand far off to see hur."
Mad? Yes! Are many of us mad in this way?
"Poor Deb! poor Deb!" he said, soothingly.
"It is here," she said, suddenly jerking into his hand a small roll.
"I took it! I did it! Me, me!--not hur! I shall be hanged, I shall be
burnt in hell, if anybody knows I took it! Out of his pocket, as he
leaned against t' bricks. Hur knows?"
She thrust it into his hand, and then, her errand done, began to gather
chips together to make a fire, choking down hysteric sobs.
"Has it come to this?"
That was all he said. The Welsh Wolfe blood was honest. The roll was a
small green pocket-book containing one or two gold pieces, and a check
for an incredible amount, as it seemed to the poor puddler. He laid it
down, hiding his face again in his hands.
"Hugh, don't be angry wud me! It's only poor Deb,--hur knows?"
He took the long skinny fingers kindly in his.
"Angry? God help me, no! Let me sleep. I am tired."
He threw himself heavily down on the wooden bench, stunned with pain and
weariness. She brought some old rags to cover him.
It was late on Sunday evening before he awoke. I tell God's truth, when
I say he had then no thought of keeping this money. Deborah had hid it
in his pocket. He found it there. She watched him eagerly, as he took it
out.
"I must gif it to him," he said, reading her face.
"Hur knows," she said with a bitter sigh of disappointment. "But it is
hur right to keep it."
His right! The word struck him. Doctor May had used the same. He washed
himself, and went out to find this man Mitchell. His right! Why did this
chance word cling to him so obstinately? Do you hear the fierce devils
whisper in his ear, as he went slowly down the darkening street?
The evening came on, slow and calm. He seated himself at the end of
an alley leading into one of the larger streets. His brain was clear
to-night, keen, intent, mastering. It would not start back, cowardly,
from any hellish temptation, but meet it face to face. Therefore the
great temptation of his life came to him veiled by no sophistry, but
bold, defiant, owning its own vile name, trusting to one bold blow for
victory.
He did not deceive himself. Theft! That was it. At first the word
sickened him; then he grappled with it. Sitting there on a broken
cart-wheel, the fading day, the noisy groups, the church-bells' tolling
passed before him like a panorama, while the sharp struggle went on
within. This money! He took it out, and looked at it. If he gave it
back, what then? He was going to be cool about it.
People going by to church saw only a sickly mill-boy watching them
quietly at the alley's mouth. They did not know that he was mad, or they
would not have gone by so quietly: mad with hunger; stretching out his
hands to the world, that had given so much to them, for leave to live
the life God meant him to live. His soul within him was smothering to
death; he wanted so much, thought so much, and _knew_--nothing. There
was nothing of which he was certain, except the mill and things there.
Of God and heaven he had heard so little, that they were to him what
fairy-land is to a child: something real, but not here; very far off.
His brain, greedy, dwarfed, full of thwarted energy and unused powers,
questioned these men and women going by, coldly, bitterly, that night.
Was it not his right to live as they,--a pure life, a good, true-hearted
life, full of beauty and kind words? He only wanted to know how to use
the strength within him. His heart warmed, as he thought of it. He
suffered himself to think of it longer. If he took the money?
Then he saw himself as he might be, strong, helpful, kindly. The night
crept on, as this one image slowly evolved itself from the crowd of
other thoughts and stood triumphant. He looked at it. As he might be!
What wonder, if it blinded him to delirium,--the madness that underlies
all revolution, all progress, and all fall?
You laugh at the shallow temptation? You see the error underlying
its argument so clearly,--that to him a true life was one of full
development rather than self-restraint? that he was deaf to the higher
tone in a cry of voluntary suffering for truth's sake than in the
fullest flow of spontaneous harmony? I do not plead his cause. I only
want to show you the mote in my brother's eye: then you can see clearly
to take it out.
The money,--there it lay on his knee, a little blotted slip of paper,
nothing in itself; used to raise him out of the pit; something straight
from God's hand. A thief! Well, what was it to be a thief? He met the
question at last, face to face, wiping the clammy drops of sweat
from his forehead. God made this money--the fresh air, too--for his
children's use. He never made the difference between poor and rich. The
Something who looked down on him that moment through the cool gray sky
had a kindly face, he knew,--loved his children alike. Oh, he knew that!
There were times when the soft floods of color in the crimson and purple
flames, or the clear depth of amber in the water below the bridge, had
somehow given him a glimpse of another world than this,--of an infinite
depth of beauty and of quiet somewhere,--somewhere,--a depth of quiet
and rest and love. Looking up now, it became strangely real. The sun had
sunk quite below the hills, but his last rays struck upward, touching
the zenith. The fog had risen, and the town and river were steeped in
its thick, gray damp; but overhead, the sun-touched smoke-clouds opened
like a cleft ocean,--shifting, rolling seas of crimson mist, waves of
billowy silver reined with blood-scarlet, inner depths unfathomable of
glancing light. Wolfe's artist-eye grew drunk with color. The gates of
that other world! Fading, flashing before him now! What, in that world
of Beauty, Content, and Right, were the petty laws, the mine and thine,
of mill-owners and mill-hands?
A consciousness of power stirred within him. He stood up. A man,--he
thought, stretching out his hands,--free to work, to live, to love!
Free! His right! He folded the scrap of paper in his hand. As his
nervous fingers took it in, limp and blotted, so his soul took in the
mean temptation, lapped it in fancied rights, in dreams of improved
existences, drifting and endless as the cloud-seas of color. Clutching
it, as if the tightness of his hold would strengthen his sense of
possession, he went aimlessly down the street. It was his watch at the
mill. He need not go, need never go again, thank God!--shaking off the
thought with unspeakable loathing.
Shall I go over the history of the hours of that night? how the
man wandered from one to another of his old haunts, with a
half-consciousness of bidding them farewell,--lanes and alleys and
back-yards where the mill-hands lodged,--noting, with a new eagerness,
the filth and drunkenness, the pig-pens, the ash-heaps covered with
potato-skins, the bloated, pimpled women at the doors,--with a new
disgust, a new sense of sudden triumph, and, under all, a new, vague
dread, unknown before, smothered down, kept under, but still there? It
left him but once during the night, when, for the second time in his
life, he entered a church. It was a sombre Gothic pile, where the
stained light lost itself in far-retreating arches; built to meet the
requirements and sympathies of a far other class than Wolfe's. Yet it
touched, moved him uncontrollably. The distances, the shadows, the
still, marble figures, the mass of silent kneeling worshippers, the
mysterious music, thrilled, lifted his soul with a wonderful pain. Wolfe
forgot himself, forgot the new life he was going to live, the mean
terror gnawing underneath. The voice of the speaker strengthened the
charm; it was clear, feeling, full, strong. An old man, who had lived
much, suffered much; whose brain was keenly alive, dominant; whose heart
was summer-warm with charity. He taught it to-night. He held up Humanity
in its grand total; showed the great world-cancer to his people. Who
could show it better? He was a Christian reformer; he had studied the
age thoroughly; his outlook at man had been free, world-wide, over all
time. His faith stood sublime upon the Rock of Ages; his fiery zeal
guided vast schemes by which the gospel was to be preached to all
nations. How did he preach it to-night? In burning, light-laden words he
painted the incarnate Life, Love, the universal Man: words that became
reality in the lives of these people,--that lived again in beautiful
words and actions, trifling, but heroic. Sin, as he defied it, was a
real foe to them; their trials, temptations, were his. His words passed
far over the furnace-tender's grasp, toned to suit another class of
culture; they sounded in his ears a very pleasant song in an unknown
tongue. He meant to cure this world-cancer with a steady eye that
had never glared with hunger, and a hand that neither poverty nor
strychnine-whiskey had taught to shake. In this morbid, distorted heart
of the Welsh puddler he had failed.
Wolfe rose at last, and turned from the church down the street. He
looked up; the night had come on foggy, damp; the golden mists had
vanished, and the sky lay dull and ash-colored. He wandered again
aimlessly down the street, idly wondering what had become of the
cloud-sea of crimson and scarlet. The trial-day of this man's life was
over, and he had lost the victory. What followed was mere drifting
circumstance,--a quicker walking over the path,--that was all. Do you
want to hear the end of it? You wish me to make a tragic story out of
it? Why, in the police-reports of the morning paper you can find a dozen
such tragedies: hints of ship-wrecks unlike any that ever befell on the
high seas; hints that here a power was lost to heaven,--that there a
soul went down where no tide can ebb or flow. Commonplace enough the
hints are,--jocose sometimes, done up in rhyme.
Doctor May, a month after the night I have told you of, was reading to
his wife at breakfast from this fourth column of the morning-paper: an
unusual thing,--these police-reports not being, in general, choice
reading for ladies; but it was only one item he read.
"Oh, my dear! You remember that man I told you of, that we saw at
Kirby's mill?--that was arrested for robbing Mitchell? Here he is; just
listen:--'Circuit Court. Judge Day, Hugh Wolfe, operative in Kirby &
John's Loudon Mills. Charge, grand larceny. Sentence, nineteen years
hard labor in penitentiary.'--Scoundrel! Serves him right! After all
our kindness that night! Picking Mitchell's pocket at the very time!"
His wife said something about the ingratitude of that kind of people,
and then they began to talk of something else.
Nineteen years! How easy that was to read! What a simple word for Judge
Day to utter! Nineteen years! Half a lifetime!
Hugh Wolfe sat on the window-ledge of his cell, looking out. His ankles
were ironed. Not usual in such cases; but he had made two desperate
efforts to escape. "Well," as Haley, the jailer, said, "small blame
to him! Nineteen years' imprisonment was not a pleasant thing to look
forward to." Haley was very good-natured about it, though Wolfe had
fought him savagely.
"When he was first caught," the jailer said afterwards, in telling the
story, "before the trial, the fellow was cut down at once,--laid there
on that pallet like a dead man, with his hands over his eyes. Never saw
a man so cut down in my life. Time of the trial, too, came the queerest
dodge of any customer I ever had. Would choose no lawyer. Judge gave him
one, of course. Gibson it was. He tried to prove the fellow crazy; but
it wouldn't go. Thing was plain as daylight: money found on him. 'Twas a
hard sentence,--all the law allows; but it was for 'xample's sake. These
mill-hands are gettin' onbearable. When the sentence was read, he just
looked up, and said the money was his by rights, and that all the world
had gone wrong. That night, after the trial, a gentleman came to see him
here, name of Mitchell,--him as he stole from. Talked to him for an
hour. Thought he came for curiosity, like. After he was gone, thought
Wolfe was remarkable quiet, and went into his cell. Found him very low;
bed all bloody. Doctor said he had been bleeding at the lungs. He was as
weak as a cat; yet, if ye'll b'lieve me, he tried to get a-past me and
get out. I just carried him like a baby, and threw him on the pallet.
Three days after, he tried it again: that time reached the wall. Lord
help you! he fought like a tiger,--giv' some terrible blows. Fightin'
for life, you see; for he can't live long, shut up in the stone crib
down yonder. Got a death-cough now. 'T took two of us to bring him down
that day; so I just put the irons on his feet. There he sits, in there.
Goin' to-morrow, with a batch more of 'em. That woman, hunchback, tried
with him,--you remember?--she's only got three years. 'Complice. But
_she's_ a woman, you know. He's been quiet ever since I put on irons:
giv' up, I suppose. Looks white, sick-lookin'. It acts different on 'em,
bein' sentenced. Most of 'em gets reckless, devilish-like. Some prays
awful, and sings them vile songs of the mills, all in a breath. That
woman, now, she's desper't'. Been beggin' to see Hugh, as she calls him,
for three days. I'm a-goin' to let her in. She don't go with him. Here
she is in this next cell. I'm a-goin' now to let her in."
He let her in. Wolfe did not see her. She crept into a corner of the
cell, and stood watching him. He was scratching the iron bars of the
window with a piece of tin which he had picked up, with an idle,
uncertain, vacant stare, just as a child or idiot would do.
"Tryin' to get out, old boy?" laughed Haley. "Them irons will need a
crowbar beside your tin, before you can open 'em."
Wolfe laughed, too, in a senseless way.
"I think I'll get out," he said.
"I believe his brain's touched," said Haley, when he came out.
The puddler scraped away with the tin for half an hour. Still Deborah
did not speak. At last she ventured nearer, and touched his arm.
"Blood?" she said, looking at some spots on his coat with a shudder.
He looked up at her. "Why, Deb!" he said, smiling,--such a bright,
boyish smile, that it went to poor Deborah's heart directly, and she
sobbed and cried out loud.
"Oh, Hugh, lad! Hugh! dunnot look at me, when it wur my fault! To think
I brought hur to it! And I loved hur so! Oh, lad, I dud!"
The confession, even in this wretch, came with the woman's blush through
the sharp cry.
He did not seem to hear her,--scraping away diligently at the bars with
the bit of tin.
Was he going mad? She peered closely into his face. Something she saw
there made her draw suddenly back,--something which Haley had not seen,
that lay beneath the pinched, vacant look it had caught since the trial,
or the curious gray shadow that rested on it. That gray shadow,--yes,
she knew what that meant. She had often seen it creeping over women's
faces for months, who died at last of slow hunger or consumption. That
meant death, distant, lingering: but this--Whatever it was the woman
saw, or thought she saw, used as she was to crime and misery, seemed to
make her sick with a new horror. Forgetting her fear of him, she caught
his shoulders, and looked keenly, steadily, into his eyes.
"Hugh!" she cried, in a desperate whisper,--"oh, boy, not that! for
God's sake, not _that!_"
The vacant laugh went off his face, and he answered her in a muttered
word or two that drove her away. Yet the words were kindly enough.
Sitting there on his pallet, she cried silently a hopeless sort of
tears, but did not speak again. The man looked up furtively at her now
and then. Whatever his own trouble was, her distress vexed him with a
momentary sting.
It was market-day. The narrow window of the jail looked down directly on
the carts and wagons drawn up in a long line, where they had unloaded.
He could see, too, and hear distinctly the clink of money as it changed
hands, the busy crowd of whites and blacks shoving, pushing one another,
and the chaffering and swearing at the stalls. Somehow, the sound, more
than anything else had done, wakened him up,--made the whole real to
him. He was done with the world and the business of it. He let the tin
fall, and looked out, pressing his face close to the rusty bars. How
they crowded and pushed! And he,--he should never walk that pavement
again! There came Neff Sanders, one of the feeders at the mill, with
a basket on his arm. Sure enough, Neff was married the other week. He
whistled, hoping he would look up; but he did not. He wondered if Neff
remembered he was there,--if any of the boys thought of him up there,
and thought that he never was to go down that old cinder-road again.
Never again! He had not quite understood it before; but now he did. Not
for days or years, but never!--that was it.
How clear the light fell on that stall in front of the market! and how
like a picture it was, the dark-green heaps of corn, and the crimson
beets, and golden melons! There was another with game: how the light
flickered on that pheasant's breast, with the purplish blood dripping
over the brown feathers! He could see the red shining of the drops, it
was so near. In one minute he could be down there. It was just a step.
So easy, as it seemed, so natural to go! Yet it could never be--not in
all the thousands of years to come--that he should put his foot on that
street again! He thought of himself with a sorrowful pity, as of some
one else. There was a dog down in the market, walking after his master
with such a stately, grave look!--only a dog, yet he could go backwards
and forwards just as he pleased: he had good luck! Why, the very vilest
cur, yelping there in the gutter, had not lived his life, had been free
to act out whatever thought God had put into his brain; while he--No, he
would not think of that! He tried to put the thought away, and to listen
to a dispute between a countryman and a woman about some meat; but it
would come back. He, what had he done to bear this?
Then came the sudden picture of what might have been, and now. He knew
what it was to be in the penitentiary,--how it went with men there. He
knew how in these long years he should slowly die, but not Until soul
and body had become corrupt and rotten,--how, when he came out, if he
lived to come, even the lowest of the mill-hands would jeer him,--how
his hands would be weak, and his brain senseless and stupid. He believed
he was almost that now. He put his hand to his head, with a puzzled,
weary look. It ached, his head, with thinking. He tried to quiet
himself. It was only right, perhaps; he had done wrong. But was there
right or wrong for such as he? What was right'? And who had ever taught
him? He thrust the whole matter away. A dark, cold quiet crept through
his brain. It was all wrong; but let it be! It was nothing to him more
than the others. Let it be!
The door grated, as Haley opened it.
"Come, my woman! Must lock up for t'night. Come, stir yerself!"
She went up and took Hugh's hand.
"Good-night, Deb," he said, carelessly.
She had not hoped he would say more; but the Sired pain on her mouth
just then was bitterer than death. She took his passive hand and kissed
it.
"Hur 'll never see Deb again!" she ventured, her lips growing colder and
more bloodless.
What did she say that for? Did he not know it'! Yet he would not
impatient with poor old Deb. She had trouble of her own, as well as he.
"No, never again," he said, trying to be cheerful.
She stood just a moment, looking at him. Do you laugh at her, standing
there, with her hunchback, her rags, her bleared, withered face, and the
great despised love tugging at her heart?
"Come, you!" called Haley, impatiently.
She did not move.
"Hugh!" she whispered.
It was to be her last word. What was it?
"Hugh, boy, not THAT!"
He did not answer. She wrung her hands, trying to be silent, looking in
his face in an agony of entreaty. He smiled again, kindly.
"It is best, Deb. I cannot bear to be hurted any more."
"Hur knows," she said, humbly.
"Tell my father good-bye; and--and kiss little Janey."
She nodded, saying nothing, looked in his face again, and went out of
the door. As she went, she staggered.
"Drinkin' to-day?" broke out Haley, pushing her before him. "Where the
Devil did you get it? Here, in with ye!" and he shoved her into her
cell, next to Wolfe's, and shut the door.
Along the wall of her cell there was a crack low down by the floor,
through which she could see the light from Wolfe's. She had discovered
it days before. She hurried in now, and, kneeling down by it, listened,
hoping to hear some sound. Nothing but the rasping of the tin on the
bars. He was at his old amusement again. Something in the noise jarred
on her ear, for she shivered as she heard it. Hugh rasped away at the
bars. A dull old bit of tin, not fit to cut korl with.
He looked out of the window again. People were leaving the market now.
A tall mulatto girl, following her mistress, her basket on her head,
crossed the street just below, and looked up. She was laughing; but,
when she caught sight of the haggard face peering out through the bars,
suddenly grew grave, and hurried by. A free, firm step, a clear-cut
olive face, with a scarlet turban tied on one side, dark, shining eyes,
and on the head the basket poised, filled with fruit and flowers, under
which the scarlet turban and bright eyes looked out half-shadowed. The
picture caught his eye. It was good to see a face like that. He would
try to-morrow, and cut one like it. _To-morrow_! He threw down the tin,
trembling, and covered his face with his hands. When he looked up again,
the daylight was gone.
Deborah, crouching near by on the other side of the wall, heard no
noise. He sat on the side of the low pallet, thinking. Whatever was the
mystery which the woman had seen on his face, it came out now slowly, in
the dark there, and became fixed,--a something never seen on his face
before. The evening was darkening fast. The market had been over for an
hour; the rumbling of the carts over the pavement grew more infrequent:
he listened to each, as it passed, because he thought it was to be for
the last time. For the same reason, it was, I suppose, that he strained
his eyes to catch a glimpse of each passer-by, wondering who they were,
what kind of homes they were going to, if they had children,--listening
eagerly to every chance word in the street, as if--(God be merciful to
the man! what strange fancy was this?)--as if he never should hear human
voices again.
It was quite dark at last. The street was a lonely one. The last
passenger, he thought, was gone. No,--there was a quick step: Joe Hill,
lighting the I Joe was a good old chap; never passed a fellow without
some joke or other. He remembered once seeing the place where he lived
with his wife. "Granny Hill" the boys called her. Bedridden she was; but
so kind as Joe was to her! kept the room so clean!--and the old woman,
when he was there, was laughing at "some of t' lad's foolishness." The
step was far down the street; but he could see him place the ladder, run
up, and light the gas. A longing seized him to be spoken to once more.
"Joe!" he called, out of the grating. "Good-bye, Joe!"
The old man stopped a moment, listening uncertainly; then hurried on.
The prisoner thrust his hand out of the window, and called again,
louder; but Joe was too far down the street. It was a little thing; but
it hurt him,--this disappointment.
"Good-bye, Joe!" he called, sorrowfully enough.
"Be quiet!" said one of the jailers, passing the door, striking on it
with his club.
Oh, that was the last, was it?
There was an inexpressible bitterness on his face, as he lay down on the
bed, taking the bit of tin, which he had rasped to a tolerable degree
of sharpness, in his hand,--to play with, it may be. He bared his arms,
looking intently at their corded veins and sinews. Deborah, listening in
the next cell, heard a slight clicking sound, often repeated. She shut
her lips tightly, that she might not scream; the cold drops of sweat
broke over her, in her dumb agony.
"Hur knows best," she muttered at last, fiercely clutching the boards
where she lay.
If she could have seen Wolfe, there was nothing about him to frighten
her. He lay quite still, his arms outstretched, looking at the pearly
stream of moonlight coming into the window. I think in that one hour
that came then he lived back over all the years that had gone before.
I think that all the low, vile life, all his wrongs, all his starved
hopes, came then, and stung him with a farewell poison that made him
sick unto death. He made neither moan nor cry, only turned his worn face
now and then to the pure light, that seemed so far off, as one that
said, "How long, O Lord? how long?"
The hour was over at last. The moon, passing over her nightly path,
slowly came nearer, and threw the light across his bed on his feet. He
watched it steadily, as it crept up, inch by inch, slowly. It seemed to
him to carry with it a great silence. He had been so hot and tired there
always in the mills! The years had been so fierce and cruel! There was
coming now quiet and coolness and sleep. His tense limbs relaxed, and
settled in a calm languor. The blood ran fainter and slow from his
heart. He did not think now with a savage anger of what might be and was
not; he was conscious only of deep stillness creeping over him. At first
he saw a sea of faces: the mill-men,--women he had known, drunken and
bloated,--Janeys timid and pitiful,--poor old Debs: then they floated
together like a mist, and faded away, leaving only the clear, pearly
moonlight.
Whether, as the pure light crept up the stretched-out figure, it brought
with it calm and peace, who shall say? His dumb soul was alone with
God in judgment. A Voice may have spoken for it from far-off Calvary,
"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!" Who dare say?
Fainter and fainter the heart rose and fell, slower and slower the moon
floated from behind a cloud, until, when at last its full tide of white
splendor swept over the cell, it seemed to wrap and fold into a deeper
stillness the dead figure that never should move again. Silence deeper
than the Night! Nothing that moved, save the black, nauseous stream of
blood dripping slowly from the pallet to the floor!
There was outcry and crowd enough in the cell the next day. The coroner
and his jury, the local editors, Kirby himself, and boys with their
hands thrust knowingly into their pockets and heads on one side, jammed
into the corners. Coming and going all day. Only one woman. She came
late, and outstayed them all. A Quaker, or Friend, as they call
themselves. I think this woman was known by that name in heaven. A
homely body, coarsely dressed in gray and white. Deborah (for Haley had
let her in) took notice of her. She watched them all--sitting on the
end of the pallet, holding his head in her arms--with the ferocity of
a watch-dog, if any of them touched the body. There was no meekness,
sorrow, in her face; the stuff out of which murderers are made, instead.
All the time Haley and the woman were laying straight the limbs and
cleaning the cell, Deborah sat still, keenly watching the Quaker's face.
Of all the crowd there that day, this woman alone had not spoken to
her,--only once or twice had put some cordial to her lips. After they
all were gone, the woman, in the same still, gentle way, brought a vase
of wood-leaves and berries, and placed it by the pallet, then opened the
narrow window. The fresh air blew in, and swept the woody fragrance over
the dead face. Deborah looked up with a quick wonder.
"Did hur know my boy wud like it? Did hur know Hugh?"
"I know Hugh now."
The white fingers passed in a slow, pitiful way over the dead, worn
face. There was a heavy shadow in the quiet eyes.
"Did hur know where they'll bury Hugh?" said Deborah in a shrill tone,
catching her arm.
This had been the question hanging on her lips all day.
"In t' town-yard? Under t'mud and ash? T'lad 'll smother, woman! He wur
born on t'lane moor, where t'air is frick and strong. Take hur out, for
God's sake, take hur out where t'air blows!"
The Quaker hesitated, but only for a moment. She put her strong arm
around Deborah and led her to the window.
"Thee sees the hills, friend, over the river? Thee sees how the
light lies warm there, and the winds of God blow all the day? I live
there,--where the blue smoke is, by the trees. Look at me." She turned
Deborah's face to her own, clear and earnest. "Thee will believe me? I
will take Hugh and bury him there to-morrow."
Deborah did not doubt her. As the evening wore on, she leaned against
the iron bars, looking at the hills that rose far off, through the thick
sodden clouds, like a bright, unattainable calm. As she looked, a shadow
of their solemn repose fell on her face: its fierce discontent faded
into a pitiful, humble quiet. Slow, solemn tears gathered in her eyes:
the poor weak eyes turned so hopelessly to the place where Hugh was to
rest, the grave heights looking higher and brighter and more solemn than
ever before. The Quaker watched her keenly. She came to her at last, and
touched her arm.
"When thee comes back," she said, in a low, sorrowful tone, like one
who speaks from a strong heart deeply moved with remorse or pity, "thee
shall begin thy life again,--there on the hills. I came too late; but
not for thee,--by God's help, it may be."
Not too late. Three years after, the Quaker began her work. I end my
story here. At evening-time it was light. There is no need to tire
you with the long years of sunshine, and fresh air, and slow, patient
Christ-love, needed to make healthy and hopeful this impure body and
soul. There is a homely pine house, on one of these hills, whose windows
overlook broad, wooded slopes and clover-crimsoned meadows,--niched into
the very place where the light is warmest, the air freest. It is the
Friends' meeting-house. Once a week they sit there, in their grave,
earnest way, waiting for the Spirit of Love to speak, opening their
simple hearts to receive His words. There is a woman, old, deformed, who
takes a humble place among them: waiting like them: in her gray dress,
her worn face, pure and meek, turned now and then to the sky. A woman
much loved by these silent, restful people; more silent than they, more
humble, more loving. Waiting: with her eyes turned to hills higher and
purer than these on which she lives,--dim and far off now, but to be
reached some day. There may be in her heart some latent hope to meet
there the love denied her here,--that she shall find him whom she lost,
and that then she will not be all-unworthy. Who blames her? Something
is lost in the passage of every soul from one eternity to the
other,--something pure and beautiful, which might have been and was not:
a hope, a talent, a love, over which the soul mourns, like Esau deprived
of his birthright. What blame to the meek Quaker, if she took her lost
hope to make the hills of heaven more fair?
Nothing remains to tell that the poor Welsh puddler once lived, but this
figure of the mill-woman cut in korl. I have it here in a corner of my
library. I keep it hid behind a curtain,--it is such a rough, ungainly
thing. Yet there are about it touches, grand sweeps of outline, that
show a master's hand. Sometimes,--to-night, for instance,--the curtain is
accidentally drawn back, and I see a bare arm stretched out imploringly
in the darkness, and an eager, wolfish face watching mine: a wan, woful
face, through which the spirit of the dead korl-cutter looks out, with
its thwarted life, its mighty hunger, its unfinished work. Its pale,
vague lips seem to tremble with a terrible question, "Is this the End?"
they say,--"nothing beyond?--no more?"
Why, you tell me you have seen that look in the eyes of dumb
brutes,--horses dying under the lash. I know.
The deep of the night is passing while I write. The gas-light wakens
from the shadows here and there the objects which lie scattered through
the room: only faintly, though; for they belong to the open sunlight. As
I glance at them, they each recall some task or pleasure of the coming
day. A half-moulded child's head; Aphrodite; a bough of forest-leaves;
music; work; homely fragments, in which lie the secrets of all eternal
truth and beauty. Prophetic all! Only this dumb, woful face seems to
belong to and end with the night. I turn to look at it Has the power of
its desperate need commanded the darkness away? While the room is yet
steeped in heavy shadow, a cool, gray light suddenly touches its head
like a blessing hand, and its groping arm points through the broken
cloud to the far East, where, in the nickering, nebulous crimson, God
has set the promise of the Dawn.
* * * * *
THE REIGN OF KING COTTON.
To every age and to all nations belong their peculiar maxims and
political or religious cries, which, if collected by some ingenious
philosopher, would make a striking compendium of universal history.
Sometimes a curious outward similarity exists between these condensed
national sentences of peoples dissimilar in every other respect. Thus,
to-day is heard in the senescent East the oft-repeated formula of the
Mussulman's faith, "There is no God but Allah, and Mahomet is his
Prophet," while in the youthful West a new cry, as fully believed, not
less devout, and scarcely less often repeated, arises from one great
and influential portion of the political and social thinkers of this
country,--the cry that "There is no King but Cotton, and the African is
its High-Priest." According to the creed of philosophy, philanthropy,
and economy in vogue among the sect whose views take utterance in this
formula, King Cotton has now reigned supreme over the temporal affairs
of the princes, potentates, and people of this earth for some thirty
years. Consequently, it is fair to presume that its reign has fully
developed its policy and tendencies and is producing its fruit for good
or evil, especially in the land of its disciples. It is well, therefore,
sometimes to withdraw a little from the dust and smoke of the battle,
which, with us at least, announces the spread of this potentate's power,
and to try to disentangle the real questions at issue in the struggle
from the eternal complications produced by short-sighted politicians and
popular issues. Looking at the policy and tendency of the reign of King
Cotton, as hitherto developed and indicated by its most confidential
advisers and apostles and by the lapse of time in the so-called Slave
States, to what end does it necessarily tend? to what results must it
logically lead?
What is coarsely, but expressively, described in the political slang of
this country as "_The Everlasting Nigger Question_" might perhaps fairly
be considered exhausted as a topic of discussion, if ever a topic was.
Is it exhausted, however? Have not rather the smoke and sweat and dust
of the political battle in which we have been so long and so fiercely
engaged exercised a dimming influence on our eyes as to the true
difficulty and its remedy, as they have on the vision of other angry
combatants since the world began? It is easy to say, in days like these,
that men seem at once to lose their judgment and reason when they
approach this question,--to look hardly an arm's length before
them,--to become mere tools of their own passions; and all this is true,
and, in conceding it all, no more is conceded than that the men of the
present day are also mortal. How many voters in the last election,
before they went to the polls, had seriously thought out for themselves
the real issue of the contest, apart from party names and platforms and
popular cries and passionate appeals to the conscience and the purse?
In all parties, some doubtless were impelled by fanaticism,--many were
guided by instinct,--more by the voice of their leaders,--most by party
catchwords and material interests,--but how many by real reflection and
the exercise of reason? Was it every fifth man, or every tenth? Was it
every fiftieth? Let every one judge for himself. The history of the
reigning dynasty, its policy and tendency, are still open questions, the
discussion of which, though perhaps become tedious, is not exhausted,
and, if conducted in a fair spirit, will at least do no harm. What,
then, is all this thirty years' turmoil, of which the world is growing
sick, about? Are we indeed only fighting, as the party-leaders at the
North seem trying to persuade us, for the control, by the interests of
free labor or of slave-labor, of certain remaining national territories
into which probably slavery never could be made to enter?--or rather
is there not some deep innate principle,--some strong motive of
aggrandizement or preservation,--some real Enceladus,--the cause of this
furious volcano of destructive agitation? If, indeed, the struggle
be for the possession of a sterile waste in the heart of the
continent,--useless either as a slave-breeding or a slave-working
country,--clearly, whatever the politician might say to the contrary,
the patriot and the merchant would soon apply to the struggle the
principle, that sometimes the game is not worth the candle. If, however,
there be an underlying principle, the case is different, and the cost of
the struggle admits of no limit save the value of the motive principle.
He who now pretends to discuss this question should approach it neither
as a Whig, a Democrat, nor a Republican, but should look at it by the
light of political philosophy and economy, forgetful of the shibboleth
of party or appeals to passion. So far as may be, in this spirit it is
proposed to discuss it here.
"By its fruits ye shall know it." Look, then, for a moment, at the
fruits of the Cotton dynasty, as hitherto developed in the working of
its policy and its natural tendency,--observe its vital essence and
logical necessities,--seek for the result of its workings, when brought
in contact with the vital spirits and life-currents of our original
policy as a people,--and then decide whether this contest in which we
are engaged is indeed an irrepressible and inextinguishable contest,
or whether all this while we have not been fighting with shadows. King
Cotton has now reigned for thirty years, be the same less or more. To
feel sure that we know what its policy has wrought in that time, we must
first seek for the conditions under which it originally began its work.
Ever since Adam and Eve were forced, on their expulsion from Paradise,
to try the first experiment at self-government, their descendants have
been pursuing a course of homoeopathic treatment. It was the eating of
the fruit of the tree of knowledge which caused all their woes; and
in an increased consumption of the fruit of that tree they have
persistently looked for alleviation of them. Experience seems to prove
the wisdom of the treatment. The greater the consumption of the fruit,
the greater the happiness of man. Knowledge has at last become the basis
of all things,--of power, of social standing, of material prosperity,
and, finally, in America, of government itself. Until within a century
past, political philosophy in the creation of government began at the
wrong end. It built from the pinnacle downward. The stability of the
government depended on the apex,--the one or the few,--and not on the
base,--the foundation of the many. At length, in this country, fresh
from the hand of Nature, the astonished world saw a new experiment
tried,--a government systematically built up from the foundation of
the many,--a government drawing its being from, and dependent for its
continued existence on, the will and the intelligence of the governed.
The foundation had first been laid deep and strong, and on it a goodly
superstructure of government was erected. Yet, even to this day, the
very subjects of that government itself do not realize that they, and
not the government, are the sources of national prosperity. In times of
national emergency like the present,--amid clamors of secession and
of coercion,--angry threats and angrier replies,--wars and rumors of
wars,--what is more common than to hear sensible men--men whom the
people look to as leaders--picturing forth a dire relapse into barbarism
and anarchy as the necessary consequence of the threatened convulsions?
They forget, if they ever realized, that the people made this
government, and not the government the people. Destroy the intelligence
of the people, and the government could not exist for a day;--destroy
this government, and the people would create another, and yet another,
of no less perfect symmetry. While the foundations are firm, there need
be no fears of the superstructure, which may be renewed again and again;
but touch the foundations, and the superstructure must crumble at once.
Those who still insist on believing that this government made the people
are fond of triumphantly pointing to the condition of the States of
Mexico, as telling the history of our own future, let our present
government be once interrupted in its functions. Are Mexicans Yankees?
Are Spaniards Anglo-Saxons? Are Catholicism and religious freedom, the
Inquisition and common schools, despotism and democracy, synonymous
terms? Could a successful republic, on our model, be at once instituted
in Africa on the assassination of the King of Timbuctoo? Have two
centuries of education nothing to do with our success, or an eternity of
ignorance with Mexican failure? Was our government a lucky guess, and
theirs an unfortunate speculation? The one lesson that America is
destined to teach the world, or to miss her destiny in failing to teach,
has with us passed into a truism, and is yet continually lost sight of;
it is the magnificent result of three thousand years of experiment: the
simple truth, that no government is so firm, so truly conservative, and
so wholly indestructible, as a government founded and dependent for
support upon the affections and good-will of a moral, intelligent, and
educated community. In our politics, we hear much of State-rights and
centralization,--of distribution of power,--of checks and balances,--of
constitutions and their construction,--of patronage and its
distribution,--of banks, of tariffs, and of trade,--all of them subjects
of moment in their sphere; but their sphere is limited. Whether they be
decided one way or the other is of comparatively little consequence:
for, however they are decided, if the people are educated and informed,
the government will go on, and the community be prosperous, be they
decided never so badly,--and if decided badly, the decision will he
reversed; but let the people become ignorant and debased, and all the
checks and balances and wise regulations which the ingenuity of man
could in centuries devise would, at best, but for a short space defer
the downfall of a republic. A well-founded republic can, then, be
destroyed only by destroying its people,--its decay need be looked for
only in the decay of their intelligence; and any form of thought or
any institution tending to suppress education or destroy intelligence
strikes at the very essence of the government, and constitutes a treason
which no law can meet, and for which no punishment is adequate.
Education, then, as universally diffused as the elements of God, is the
life-blood of our body politic. The intelligence of the people is the
one great fact of our civilization and our prosperity,--it is the
beating heart of our age and of our land. It is education alone which
makes equality possible without anarchy, and liberty without license. It
is this--which makes the fundamental principles of our Declaration of
Independence living realities in New England, while in France they still
remain the rhetorical statement of glittering generalities. From this
source flow all our possibilities. Without it, the equality of man is a
pretty figure of speech; with it, democracy is possible. This is a path
beaten by two hundred years of footprints, and while we walk it we are
safe and need fear no evil; but if we diverge from it, be it for never
so little, we stumble, and, unless we quickly retrace our steps, we fall
and are lost. The tutelary goddess of American liberty should be the
pure marble image of the Professor's Yankee school-mistress. Education
is the fundamental support of our system. It was education which made us
free, progressive, and conservative; and it is education alone which can
keep us so.
With this fact clearly established, the next inquiry should be as to
the bearing and policy of the Cotton dynasty as touching this
question of general intelligence. It is a mere truism to say that the
cotton-culture is the cause of the present philosophical and economical
phase of the African question. Throughout the South, whether justly or
not, it is considered as well settled that cotton can be profitably
raised only by a forced system of labor. This theory has been denied by
some writers, and, in experience, is certainly subject to some marked
exceptions; but undoubtedly it is the creed of the Cotton dynasty,
and must here, therefore, be taken for true.[A] With this theory, the
Southern States are under a direct inducement, in the nature of a bribe,
to the amount of the annual profit on their cotton-crop, to see as
many perfections and as few imperfections as possible in the system of
African slavery, and to follow it out unflinchingly into all its logical
necessities. Thus, under the direct influence of the Cotton dynasty, the
whole Southern tone on this subject has undergone a change. Slavery is
no longer deplored as a necessary evil, but it is maintained as in
all respects a substantial good. One of the logical necessities of a
thorough slave-system is, in at least the slave-portion of the people,
extreme ignorance. Whatever theoretically may be desirable in this
respect among the master-class, ignorance, in its worst form,--ignorance
of everything except the use of the tools with which their work is to
be done,--is the necessary condition of the slaves. But it is said that
slaves are property, without voice or influence in the government, and
that the ignorance of the black is no obstacle to the intelligence
of the white. This possibly may be true; but a government founded on
ignorance, as the essential condition of one portion of its people, is
not likely long to regard education as its vital source and essence.
Still the assertion that the rule of education does not apply to slaves
must be allowed; for we must deal with facts as we find them; and
undoubtedly the slave has no rights which the master is bound to
respect; and in speaking of the policy of the Cotton dynasty, the
servile population must be regarded as it is, ignoring the question of
what it might be; it must be taken into consideration only as a terrible
inert mass of domesticated barbarism, and there left. The question
here is solely with the policy and tendency of the Cotton dynasty
as affecting the master-class, and the servile class is in that
consideration to be summarily disposed of as so much labor owned by so
much capital.
[Footnote A: "In truth," the institution of slavery, as an agency for
cotton-cultivation, "is an expensive luxury, a dangerous and artificial
state, and, even in a-worldly point of view, an error. The cost of a
first-class negro in the United States is about £800, and the interest
on the capital invested in and the wear and tear of this human chattel
are equal to 10 per cent., which, with the cost of maintaining,
clothing, and doctoring him, or another 5 per cent, gives an annual cost
of £45; and the pampered Coolies in the best paying of all the tropical
settlements, Trinidad, receive wages that do not exceed on an average
on the year round 6s. per week, or about two-fifths, while in the East
Indies, with perquisites, they do not receive so much as two-thirds of
this. In Cuba, the Chinese emigrants do not receive so much even as
one-third of this."--_Cotton Trade of Great Britain_, by J.A. MANN.
--In India, labor is 80 per cent cheaper than in the United States.]
The dynasty of Cotton is based on the monopoly of the cotton-culture in
the Cotton States of the Union; its whole policy is directed to the two
ends of making the most of and retaining that monopoly; and economically
it reduces everything to subserviency to the question of cotton-supply;
--thus Cotton is King. The result necessarily is, that the Cotton States
have turned all their energies to that one branch of industry. All other
branches they abandon or allow to languish. They have no commerce of
their own, few manufactories, fewer arts; and in their abandonment of
self in their devotion to their King, they do not even raise their
own hay or corn, dig their own coal, or fell their own timber; and at
present, Louisiana is abandoning the sugar-culture, one of the few
remaining exports of the South, to share more largely in the monopoly of
cotton. Thus the community necessarily loses its fair proportions; it
ceases to be self-sustaining; it exercises one faculty alone, until all
the others wither and become impotent for very lack of use. This intense
and all-pervading devotion to one pursuit, and that a pursuit to which
the existence of a servile class is declared essential, must, in a
republic more than in any other government, produce certain marked
politico-philosophical and economical effects on the master-class as a
whole. In a country conducted on a system of servile labor, as in one
conducted on free, the master-class must be divided into the two great
orders of the rich and poor,--those who have, and those who have not.
That the whole policy of the Cotton dynasty tends necessarily to making
broader the chasm between these orders is most apparent. It makes the
rich richer, and the poor poorer; for, as, according to the creed of the
dynasty, capital should own labor, and the labor thus owned can alone
successfully produce cotton, he who has must be continually increasing
his store, while he who has not can neither raise the one staple
recognized by the Cotton dynasty, nor turn his labor, his only property,
to other branches of industry; for such have, in the universal
abandonment of the community to cotton, been allowed to languish and
die. The economical tendency of the Cotton dynasty is therefore to
divide the master-class yet more distinctly into the two great opposing
orders of society. On the one hand we see the capitalist owning the
labor of a thousand slaves, and on the other the laboring white unable,
under the destructive influence of a profitable monopoly, to make any
use of that labor which is his only property.
What influence, then, has the Cotton dynasty on that portion of the
master-class who are without capital? Its tendency has certainly
necessarily been to make their labor of little value; but they are still
citizens of a republic, free to come and go, and, in the eye of the law,
equal with the highest;--on them, in times of emergency, the government
must rest; their education and intelligence are its only sure
foundations. But, having made this class the vast majority of the
master-caste, what are the policy and tendency of the Cotton dynasty
as touching them? The story is almost too old to bear even the
shortest repetition. Philosophically, it is a logical necessity
of the Cotton dynasty that it should be opposed to universal
intelligence;--economically, it renders universal intelligence an
impossibility. That slavery is in itself a positive good to society is
a fundamental doctrine of the Cotton dynasty, and a proposition
not necessary to be combated here; but, unfortunately, universal
intelligence renders free discussion a necessity, and experience tells
us that the suppression of free discussion is necessary to the existence
of slavery. We are but living history over again. The same causes have
often existed before, and they have drawn after them the necessary
effects. Other peoples, at other times, as well as our Southern brethren
at present, have felt, that the suppression of general discussion was
necessary to the preservation of a prized and peculiar institution.
Spain, Italy, Germany, France, the Netherlands, England, and Scotland
have all, at different times, experienced the forced suppression of
some one branch of political or religious thought. Their histories have
recorded the effect of that suppression; and the rule to be deduced
therefrom is simply this: If the people among whom such suppression is
attempted are ignorant, and are kept so as part of a system, the attempt
may be successful, though in its results working destruction to
the community;--if, however, they are intelligent, and the system
incautiously admits into itself any plan of education, the attempt
at suppression will be abandoned, as the result either of policy or
violence. In this respect, then, on philosophical grounds, the Cotton
dynasty is not likely to favor the education of the masses. Again, it
is undoubtedly the interest of the man who has not, that all possible
branches of industry should be open to his labor, as rendering that
labor of greater value; but the whole tendency of the Cotton monopoly is
to blight all branches of industry in the Cotton States save only that
one. General intelligence might lead the poor white to suspect this fact
of an interest of his own antagonistic to the policy of the Cotton King,
and therefore general intelligence is not part of that monarch's policy.
This the philosophers of the Cotton dynasty fairly avow and class high
among those dangers against which it behooves them to be on their guard.
They theorize thus:--
"The great mass of our poor white population begin to understand that
they have rights, and that they, too, are entitled to some of the
sympathy which falls upon the suffering. They are fast learning that
there is an almost infinite world of industry opening before them, by
which they can elevate themselves and their families from wretchedness
and ignorance to competence and intelligence. It is this great upheaving
of our masses which we have to fear, so far as our institutions are
concerned."[B]
[Footnote B: _De Bow's Review_, January, 1850. Quoted in Olmsted's _Back
Country_, p. 451.]
Further, the policy of the Cotton King, however honestly in theory it
may wish to encourage it, renders general education and consequent
intelligence an impossibility. A system of universal education is made
for a laboring population, and can be sustained only among a laboring
population; but if that population consist of slaves, universal
education cannot exist. The reason is simple; for the children of all
must be educated, otherwise the scholars will not support the schools.
It is an absolute necessity of society that in agricultural districts
cultivated by slave-labor the free population should be too sparsely
scattered to support a system of schools, even on starvation wages for
the cheapest class of teachers.
Finally, though it is a subject not necessary now to discuss, the effect
of the Cotton monopoly and dynasty in depressing the majority of the
whites into a species of labor competition in the same branch of
industry as the blacks, because the only branch open to all, can
hardly have a self-respect-inspiring influence on that portion of the
community, but should in its results rather illustrate old Falstaff's
remark,--that "there is a thing often heard of, and it is known to many
in our land, by the name of pitch; this pitch, as ancient writers do
report, doth defile: so doth the company thou keepest."
Such, reason tells us, should be the effect on the intelligence and
education of the free masses of the South of the policy and dynasty of
King Cotton. That experience in this case verifies the conclusions
of reason who can doubt who has ever set foot in a thorough Slave
State,--or in Kansas, or in any Free State half-peopled by the poor
whites of the South?--or who can doubt it, that has ever even talked on
the subject with an intelligent and fair-minded Southern gentleman? Who
that knows them will deny that the poor whites of the South make the
worst population in the country? Who ever heard a Southern gentleman
speak of them, save in Congress or on the hustings, otherwise than with
aversion and contempt?[C]
[Footnote C: Except when used by the accomplished statistician, there is
nothing more fallacious than the figures of the census. As the author of
this article is a disciple neither of Buckle nor De Bow, they have not
been used at all; but a few of the census figures are nevertheless
instructive, as showing the difference between the Free and the Servile
States in respect to popular education. According to the census of 1850,
the white population of the Slave States amounted to 6,184,477 souls,
and the colored population, free and slave, brought the total population
up to an aggregate of 9,612,979, of which the whole number of
school-pupils was 581,861. New York, with a population of 3,097,894
souls, numbered 675,221 pupils, or 98,830 more than all the Slave
States. The eight Cotton States, from South Carolina to Arkansas, with
a population of 2,137,264 whites and a grand total of 3,970,337 human
beings, contained 141,032 pupils; the State of Massachusetts, with a
total population of 994,514, numbered 176,475, or 35,443 pupils more
than all the Cotton States. In popular governments the great sources
of general intelligence are newspapers and periodicals; in estimating
these, metropolitan New York should not be considered; but of these
the whole number, in 1850, issued annually in all the Slave States was
61,038,698, and the number in the not peculiarly enlightened State of
Pennsylvania was 84,898,672, or 3,859,974 more than in all the Slave
States. In the eight Cotton States, the whole number was 30,041,991; and
in the single State of Massachusetts, 64,820,564, or 34,778,573 more,
and in the single State of Ohio, 30,473,407, or 431,416 more, than in
all the above eight States.]
Here, then, we come at once to the foundation of a policy and the cause
of this struggle. Whether it will or no, it is the inevitable tendency
of the Cotton dynasty to be opposed to general intelligence. It is
opposed to that, then, without which a republic cannot hope to exist;
it is opposed to and denies the whole results of two thousand years of
experience. The social system of which the government of to-day is
the creature is founded on the principle of a generally diffused
intelligence of the people; but if now Cotton be King, as is so boldly
asserted, then an influence has obtained control of the government of
which the whole policy is in direct antagonism with, the very elementary
ideas of that government. History tells us that eight bags of cotton
imported into England in 1784 were seized by the custom-house officers
at Liverpool, on the ground that so much cotton could not have been
produced in these States. In 1860, the cotton-crop was estimated at
3,851,481 bales. Thus King Cotton was born with this government, and
has strengthened with its strength; and to-day, almost the creature of
destiny, sent to work the failure of our experiment as a people, it has
led almost one-half of the Republic to completely ignore, if not to
reject, the one principle absolutely essential to that Republic's
continued existence. What two thousand years ago was said of Rome
applies to us:--"Those abuses and corruptions which in time destroy a
government are sown along with the very seeds of it and both grow up
together; and as rust eats away iron, and worms devour wood, and both
are a sort of plagues born and bred with the substance they destroy; so
with every form and scheme of government that man can invent, some vice
or corruption creeps in with the very institution, which grows up along
with and at last destroys it." No wonder, then, that the conflict
is irrepressible and hot; for two instinctive principles of
self-preservation have met in deadly conflict: the South, with the eager
loyalty of the Cavalier, rallies to the standard of King Cotton, while
the North, with the earnest devotion of the Puritan, struggles hard in
defence of the fundamental principles of its liberties and the ark of
its salvation.
Thus over nearly half of the national domain and among a large minority
of the citizens of the Republic, the dynasty of Cotton has worked a
divergence from original principle. Wherever the sway of King Cotton
extends, the people have for the present lost sight of the most
essential of our national attributes. They are seeking to found a great
and prosperous republic on the cultivation of a single staple product,
and not on intelligence universally diffused: consequently they
have founded their house upon the sand. Among them, cotton, and
not knowledge, is power. When thus reduced to its logical
necessities,--brought down, as it were, to the hard pan,--the experience
of two thousand years convincingly proves that their experiment as a
democracy must fail. It is, then, a question of vital importance to
the whole people,--How can this divergence be terminated? Is there any
result, any agency, which can destroy this dynasty, and restore us as a
people to the firm foundations upon which our experiment was begun? Can
the present agitation effect this result? If it could, the country might
joyfully bid a long farewell to "the canker of peace," and "hail the
blood-red blossom of war with a heart of fire"; but the sad answer, that
it cannot, whether resulting in the successor Democrat or Republican,
seems almost too evident for discussion. The present conflict is good so
far as it goes, but it touches only the surface of things. It is well to
drive the Cotton dynasty from the control of the national government;
but the aims of the Republican party can reach no farther, even if it
meet with complete success in that. But even that much is doubtful. The
danger at this point is one ever recurring. Those Northern politicians,
who, in pursuit of their political objects and ambition, unreservedly
bind up their destinies with those of the Cotton dynasty,--the Issachars
of the North, whose strong backs are bowed to receive any burden,--the
men who in the present conflict will see nought but the result of the
maudlin sentimentality of fanatics and the empty cries of ambitious
demagogues,--are not mistaken in their calculations. While Cotton is
King, as it now is, nothing but time or its own insanity can permanently
shake its hold on the national policy. In moments of fierce convulsion,
as at present, the North, like a restive steed, may contest its
supremacy. Let the South, however, bend, not break, before the storm,
and history is indeed "a nurse's tale," if the final victory does not
rest with the party of unity and discipline. While the monopoly of
cotton exists with the South, and it is cultivated exclusively by native
African labor, the national government will as surely tend, in spite of
all momentarily disturbing influences, towards a united South as the
needle to the pole. But even if the government were permanently wrested
from its control, would the evil be remedied? Surely not. The disease
which is sapping the foundations of our liberty is not eradicated
because its workings are forced inward. What remedy is that which leaves
a false and pernicious policy--a policy in avowed war with the whole
spirit of our civilization and in open hostility to our whole experiment
as a government--in full working, almost a religious creed with near
one-half of our people? As a remedy, this would be but a quack medicine
at the best. The cure must be a more thorough one. The remedy we must
look for--the only one which can meet the exigencies of the case--must
be one which will restore to the South the attributes of a democracy. It
must cause our Southern brethren of their own free will to reverse their
steps,--to return from their divergence. It must teach them a purer
Christianity, a truer philosophy, a sounder economy. It must lead them
to new paths of industry. It must gently persuade them that a true
national prosperity is not the result of a total abandonment of
the community to the culture of one staple. It must make them
self-dependent, so that no longer they shall have to import their
corn from the Northwest, their lumber-men and hay from Maine, their
manufactures from Massachusetts, their minerals from Pennsylvania, and
to employ the shipping of the world. Finally, it must make it impossible
for one overgrown interest to plunge the whole community unresistingly
into frantic rebellion or needless war. They must learn that a
well-conditioned state is, so far as may be, perfect in itself,--and,
to be perfect in itself, must be intelligent and free. When these
lessons are taught to the South, then will their divergence cease,
and they will enter upon a new path of enjoyment, prosperity, and
permanence. The world at present pays them an annual bribe of some
$65,000,000 to learn none of these lessons. Their material interest
teaches them to bow down to the shrine of King Cotton. Here, then, lies
the remedy with the disease. The prosperity of the country in general,
and of the South in particular, demands that the reign of King Cotton
should cease,--that his dynasty should be destroyed. This result can
be obtained but in one way, and that seemingly ruinous. The present
monopoly in their great staple commodity enjoyed by the South must be
destroyed, and forever. This result every patriot and well-wisher of the
South should ever long for; and yet, by every Southern statesman and
philosopher, it is regarded as the one irremediable evil possible to
their country. What miserable economy! what feeble foresight! What
principle of political economy is better established than that a
monopoly is a curse to both producer and consumer? To the first it pays
a premium on fraud, sloth, and negligence; and to the second it supplies
the worst possible article, in the worst possible way, at the highest
possible price. In agriculture, in manufactures, in the professions, and
in the arts, it is the greatest bar to improvement with which any branch
of industry can be cursed. The South is now showing to the world an
example of a great people borne down, crushed to the ground, cursed, by
a monopoly. A fertile country of magnificent resources, inhabited by a
great race, of inexhaustible energy, is abandoned to one pursuit;--the
very riches of their position are as a pestilence to their prosperity.
In the presence of their great monopoly, science, art, manufactures,
mining, agriculture,--word, all the myriad branches of industry
essential to the true prosperity of a state,--wither and die, that
sanded cotton may be produced by the most costly of labor. For love of
cotton, the very intelligence of the community, the life-blood of their
polity, is disregarded and forgotten. Hence it is that the marble and
freestone quarries of New England alone are far more important sources
of revenue than all the subterranean deposits of the Servile States.
Thus the monopoly which is the apparent source of their wealth is in
reality their greatest curse; for it blinds them to the fact, that, with
nations as with individuals, a healthy competition is the one essential
to all true economy and real excellence. Monopolists are always blind,
always practise a false economy. Adam Smith tells us that "it is not
more than fifty years ago that some of the counties in the neighborhood
of London petitioned the Parliament against the extension of the
turnpike roads into the remoter counties. Those remoter counties, they
pretended, from the cheapness of labor, would be able to sell their
grass and corn cheaper in the London market than themselves, and would
thereby reduce their rents and ruin their cultivation." The great
economist significantly adds,--"Their rents, however, have risen, and
their cultivation has been improved, since that time." Finally, to-day,
would the cultivation of cereals in the Northwest be improved, if made
a monopoly? would its inhabitants be richer? would their economy be
better? Certainly not. Yet to-day they undersell the world, and, in
spite of competition, are far richer, far more contented and prosperous,
than their fellow-citizens in the South in the full enjoyment of their
boasted dynasty of Cotton.
"Here," said Wellington, on the Eton football ground, "we won the battle
of Waterloo." Not in angry declamation and wordy debate, in threats of
secession and cries for coercion, amid the clash of party-politics, the
windy declamation of blatant politicians, or the dirty scramble for
office, is the destruction of the dynasty of King Cotton to be looked
for. The laws of trade must be the great teacher; and here, as
elsewhere, England, the noble nation of shopkeepers, must be the agent
for the fulfilment of those laws. It is safe to-day to say, that,
through the agency of England, and, in accordance with those laws, under
a continuance of the present profit on that staple, the dynasty of King
Cotton is doomed,--the monopoly which is now the basis of his power will
be a monopoly no more. If saved at all from the blight of this
monopoly, the South will be saved, not in New York or Boston, but in
Liverpool,--not by the thinkers of America, but by the merchants of
England. The real danger of the Cotton dynasty lies not in the hostility
of the North, but in the exigencies of the market abroad; they struggle
not against the varying fortunes of political warfare, but against the
irreversible decrees of Fate. It is the old story of the Rutulian hero;
and now, in the very crisis and agony of the battle, while the Cotton
King is summoning all his resources and straining every nerve to cope
successfully with its more apparent, but less formidable adversary, in
the noisy struggle for temporary power, if it would listen for a moment
to the voice of reason, and observe the still working of the laws of our
being, it, too, might see cause to abandon the contest, with the
angry lament, that, not by its opponent was it vanquished, but by the
hostility of Jupiter and the gods. The operation of the laws of
trade, as touching this monopoly, is beautifully simple. Already the
indications are sufficient to tell us, that, under the sure, but
silent working of those laws, the very profits of the Southern planter
foreshadow the destruction of his monopoly. His dynasty rests upon the
theory, that his negro is the only practical agency for the production
of his staple. But the supply of African labor is limited, and the
increased profit on cotton renders the cost of that labor heavier in
its turn,--the value of the negro rising one hundred dollars for every
additional cent of profit on a pound of cotton. The increased cost of
the labor increases the cost of producing the cotton. The result is
clear; and the history of the cotton-trade has twice verified it. The
increased profits on the staple tempt competition, and, in the increased
cost of production, render it possible. Two courses only are open to the
South: either to submit to the destruction of their monopoly, or to try
to retain it by a cheaper supply of labor. They now feel the pressure of
the dilemma; and hence the cry to reopen the slave-trade. According to
the iron policy of their dynasty, they must inundate their country with
freshly imported barbarism, or compete with the world. They cry out for
more Africans; and to their cry the voice of the civilized world returns
its veto. The policy of King Cotton forces them to turn from the
daylight of free labor now breaking in Texas. On the other hand, it is
not credible that all the land adapted to the growth of the cotton-plant
is confined to America; and, at the present value of the commodity, the
land adapted to its growth would be sought out and used, though buried
now in the jungles of India, the wellnigh impenetrable wildernesses of
Africa, the table-lands of South America, or the islands of the Pacific.
Already the organized energy of England has pushed its explorations,
under Livingstone, Barth, and Clegg, into regions hitherto unknown.
Already, under the increased consumption, one-third of the cotton
consumed at Liverpool is the product of climes other than our own.
Hundreds of miles of railroad in India are opening to the market vast
regions to share in our profits and break down our monopoly. To-day,
India, for home-consumption and exportation, produces twice the amount
of cotton produced in America; and, under the increased profit of late
years, the importation into England from that country has risen from
12,324,200 pounds in 1830, to 77,011,839 pounds in 1840, and, finally,
to 250,338,144 pounds in 1857, or nearly twenty per cent of the whole
amount imported, and more than one-fourth of the whole amount imported
from America. The staple there produced does not, indeed, compare in
quality with our own; but this remark does not apply to the staple
produced in Africa,--the original home of the cotton-plant, as of the
negro,--or to that of the cotton-producing islands of the Pacific. The
inexhaustible fertility of the valley of the Nile--producing, with a
single exception, the finest cotton of the world,--lying on the same
latitude as the cotton-producing States of America, and overflowing
with unemployed labor--will find its profit, at present prices, in the
abandonment of the cultivation of corn, its staple product since the
days of Joseph, to come in competition with the monopoly of the South.
Peru, Australia, Cuba, Jamaica, and even the Feejee Islands, all are
preparing to enter the lists. And, finally, the interior of Africa, the
great unknown and unexplored land, which for centuries has baffled the
enterprise of travellers, seems about to make known her secrets under
the persuasive arguments of trade, and to make her cotton, and not her
children, her staple export in the future. In the last fact is to be
seen a poetic justice. Africa, outraged, scorned, down-trodden, is,
perhaps, to drag down forever the great enslaver of her offspring.
Thus the monopoly of King Cotton hangs upon a thread. Its profits must
fall, or it must cease to exist. If subject to no disturbing influence,
such as war, which would force the world to look elsewhere for its
supply, and thus unnaturally force production elsewhere, the growth of
this competition will probably be slow. Another War of 1812, or any
long-continued civil convulsions, would force England to look to other
sources of supply, and, thus forcing production, would probably be the
death-blow of the monopoly. Apart from all disturbing influences arising
from the rashness of his own lieges, or other causes, the reign of King
Cotton at present prices may be expected to continue some ten years
longer. For so long, then, this disturbing influence may be looked for
in American politics; and then we may hope that this tremendous material
influence, become subject, like others, to the laws of trade and
competition, will cease to threaten our liberties by silently sapping
their very foundation. As in the course of years competition gradually
increases, the effect of this competition on the South will probably be
most beneficial. The change from monopoly to competition, distributed
over many years, will come with no sudden and destructive shock, but
will take place imperceptibly. The fall of the dynasty will be gradual;
and with the dynasty must fall its policy. Its fruits must be eradicated
by time. Under the healing influence of time, the South, still young and
energetic, ceasing to think of one thing alone, will quickly turn its
attention to many. Education will be more sought for, as the policy
which resisted it, and made its diffusion impossible, ceases to exist.
With the growth of other branches of industry, labor will become
respectable and profitable, and laborers will flock to the country; and
a new, a purer, and more prosperous future will open upon the entire
Republic. Perhaps, also, it may in time be discovered that even
slave-labor is most profitable when most intelligent and best
rewarded,--that the present mode of growing cotton is the most wasteful
and extravagant, and one not bearing competition. Thus even the African
may reap benefit from the result, and in his increased self-respect and
intelligence may be found the real prosperity of the master. And thus
the peaceful laws of trade may do the work which agitation has attempted
in vain. Sweet concord may come from this dark chaos, and the world
receive another proof, that material interest, well understood, is
not in conflict, but in beautiful unison with general morality,
all-pervading intelligence, and the precepts of Christianity. Under
these influences, too, the very supply of cotton will probably be
immensely increased. Its cultivation, like the cultivation of their
staple products by the English counties mentioned by Smith, will
not languish, but flourish, under the influence of healthy
competition.--These views, though simply the apparently legitimate
result of principle and experience, are by no means unsupported by
authority. They are the same results arrived at from the reflections of
the most unprejudiced of observers. A shrewd Northern gentleman, who has
more recently and thoroughly than any other writer travelled through the
Southern States, in the final summary of his observations thus covers
all the positions here taken. "My conclusion," says Mr. Olmsted, "is
this,--that there is no physical obstacle in the way of our country's
supplying ten bales of cotton where it now does one. All that is
necessary for this purpose is to direct to the cotton-producing region
an adequate number of laborers, either black or white, or both. No
amalgamation, no association on equality, no violent disruption of
present relations is necessary. It is necessary that there should
be more objects of industry, more varied enterprises, more general
intelligence among the people,--and, especially, that they should
become, or should desire to become, richer, more comfortable, than they
are."
It is not pleasant to turn from this, and view the reverse of the
picture. But, unless our Southern brethren, in obedience to some great
law of trade or morals, return from their divergence,--if, still being
a republic in form, the South close her ears to the great truth, that
education is democracy's first law of self-preservation,--if the dynasty
of King Cotton, unshaken by present indications, should continue
indefinitely, and still the South should bow itself down as now before
its throne,--it requires no gift of prophecy to read her future. As you
sow, so shall you reap; and communities, like individuals, who sow the
wind, must, in the fulness of time, look to reap the whirlwind. The
Constitution of our Federal Union guaranties to each member composing it
a republican form of government; but no constitution can guaranty that
universal intelligence of the people without which, soon or late, a
republican government must become, not only a form, but a mockery. Under
the Cotton dynasty, the South has undoubtedly lost sight of this great
principle; and unless she return and bind herself closely to it, her
fate is fixed. Under the present monopolizing sway of King Cotton,--soon
or late, in the Union, or out of the Union,--her government must
cease to be republican, and relapse into anarchy, unless previously,
abandoning the experiment of democracy in despair, she take refuge in a
government of force. The Northern States, the educational communities,
have apparently little to fear while they cling closely to the
principles inherent in their nature. With the Servile States, or away
from them, the experiment of a constitutional republic can apparently be
carried on with success through an indefinite lapse of time; but
though, with the assistance of an original impetus and custom, they
may temporarily drag along their stumbling brethren of the South, the
catastrophe is but deferred, not avoided. Out of the Union, the more
extreme Southern States--those in which King Cotton has already firmly
established his dynasty--are, if we may judge by passing events, ripe
for the result. The more Northern have yet a reprieve of fate, as having
not yet wholly forgotten the lessons of their origin. The result,
however, be it delayed for one year or for one hundred years, can hardly
admit of doubt. The emergency which is to try their system may not arise
for many years; but passing events warn us that it maybe upon them now.
The most philosophical of modern French historians, in describing the
latter days of the Roman Empire, tells us that "the higher classes of
a nation can communicate virtue and wisdom to the government, if they
themselves are virtuous and wise: but they can never give it strength;
for strength always comes from below; it always proceeds from the
masses." The Cotton dynasty pretends not only to maintain a government
where the masses are slaves, but a republican government where the vast
majority of the higher classes are ignorant. On the intelligence of the
mass of the whites the South must rely for its republican permanence, as
on their arms it must rely for its force; and here again, the words of
Sismondi, written of falling Rome, seem already applicable to the South:
--"Thus all that class of free cultivators, who more than any other
class feel the love of country, who could defend the soil, and who ought
to furnish the best soldiers, disappeared almost entirely. The number
of small farmers diminished to such a degree, that a rich man, a man of
noble family, had often to travel more than ten leagues before falling
in with an equal or a neighbor." The destruction of the republican form
of government is, then, almost the necessary catastrophe; but what will
follow that catastrophe it is not so easy to foretell. The Republic,
thus undermined, will fall; but what shall supply its place? The
tendency of decaying republics is to anarchy; and men take refuge from
the terrors of anarchy in despotism. The South least of all can indulge
in anarchy, as it would at once tend to servile insurrection. They
cannot long be torn by civil war, for the same reason. The ever-present,
all-pervading fear of the African must force them into some government,
and the stronger the better. The social divisions of the South, into the
rich and educated whites, the poor and ignorant whites, and the
servile class, would seem naturally to point to an aristocratic or
constitutional-monarchical form of government. But, in their transition
state, difficulties are to be met in all directions; and the
well-ordered social distinctions of a constitutional monarchy seem
hardly consistent with the time-honored licentious independence and
rude equality of Southern society. The reign of King Cotton, however,
conducted under the present policy, must inevitably tend to increase and
aggravate all the present social tendencies of the Southern system,--
all the anti-republican affinities already strongly developed. It makes
deeper the chasm dividing the rich and the poor; it increases vastly the
ranks of the uneducated; and, finally, while most unnaturally forcing
the increase of the already threatening African infusion, it also tends
to make the servile condition more unendurable, and its burdens heavier.