An Unofficial Patriot Page 5

  CHAPTER V.--A man's conscience.

  But all this was away back in the years when you and I were not born,my friend, and, therefore, the only reason I tell you about it or expectyou to be interested in such simple and far-off lives is that you mayknow something of the early habits and surroundings of the man who,I began by warning you, became a lawbreaker; for, I hold it to be aself-evident fact that however true it is that heredity stamps thecharacter with its basic principles and qualities, it is never wise toforget that it is to environment, circumstance and education that we oweits modifications and the direction of its final development. But nowthat you will be able to picture to yourself the man as he then was, andhis surroundings and conditions, I will tell you as directly as I canthe story of his offense; but first I must explain that when his comingmarriage to Miss Katherine LeRoy was announced at his home, the oldMajor objected again, but this time more mildly, to the choice his sonhad made.

  "Her people are good, wholesome, respectable folks, my son," he said;"but--but, Grif, why couldn't you have found a girl of--well, one of thefamilies you were brought up with. Mind, boy, I'm not saying anythingagainst Miss Katherine. I've heard--and I don't doubt it--that she is amighty nice sort of a girl; but----"

  The Major had grown milder in his methods with his son, and he hesitatedto speak words which might cause pain hereafter.

  "Of course, Grif," he went, on after an awkward pause, "of course, ifyou love each other--and--and--well, if the thing is settled, I haveonly to congratulate you, and to say that I am truly glad to haveyou settle down, so I'll be able to know where you are. It's deucedlydisagreeable not to know from week to week where to put a finger onyou--such a tacky sort of shifty sensation about it. I can know nowat least a year at a time. Perfectly ridiculous custom it is to move apreacher just when he gets acquainted with the people, and they beginto trust him! Infernal habit! I'd as soon live on a boat and just anchorfrom time to time in another stream and call it home--and--and living.I've come to respect your sincerity, Grif, but I can't respect the senseof a denomination that has no idea of the absolute value of stability,of continuity of association, between its pastor and its people. Why,just look at the thing! It uproots the best sentiments in both, andmakes a wanderer of one who ought to be, not only by precept, but byexample, stable and faithful and continuously true to those who look upto him. Why, a scamp can pose for a year or two as a saint; but it takesreal value to live a lifetime in a community and be an inspiration anda guide to your members. Then just look at it! Nobody who has anyself-respect is going to talk of his inner life to a stranger! Weare all alike in that. We pose and pretend and keep our shutters up,mentally and morally, with a new-comer. Gad! I can't see the wisdom northe sense of any such rules."

  "Has its good points, father," said Grif, whose quiet chuckle from timeto time had stirred the Major to unusual earnestness. He wanted to getat his son's real views on the subject. "Has some redeeming qualities,after all, father, quite aside from the Bible teaching upon whichthe leaders of our church base it. There are men--even ministers, I'mafraid, whom one enjoys much better when they are on another circuit;and I may as well confess to you that there are circuits a man enjoys agood deal better when he's not on them--after he has left."

  "Some of the old boy in you yet, Grif," laughed the Major, slapping hisson on the back. "Better not say that to Father Prout, or he will keepyou on one of that kind for discipline." Jerry was filled with delightwhen told of the coming marriage of Mos' Grif. Jerry's own wife had longsince presented him with twins, and it was his delight to show off theantics of these small ebony creatures to Griffith whenever he was athome. It was at first arranged that this family only should go to formthe new household.

  The mutterings born in a different clime and under other conditions hadnow reached proportions which could not be wholly ignored. In many along ride oyer the mountain or valley paths in the past few years hadGriffith pondered the question, and he had definitely decided in hisown mind that for one who had cast his lot with the itinerant Methodistclergy, at least, the ownership of slaves was wrong. He would neverbuy nor sell a human being. Upon that point his mind was clearly andunalterably made up. But Jerry and his family were to be a part ofthe new household while yet they remained, as before, the old Major'sproperty. To this Griffith had consented readily, for Miss Katherinemust have an efficient cook and Jerry would be of infinite use. Griffithhad drawn a picture of a small house in the village in which thisbeautiful dream of his was to be realized; but, as the time drew near,the old Major developed his own plans with such skill as to carry hispoint.

  When the house was to be looked for he said: "See here, Grif, you area good deal younger than I am, and some of the older slaves are prettyhard to manage. They can't work a great deal, and they get into mischiefone way and another. Look at that set oyer in the end cabin--they alwaysdid like you best--and since you have been gone so much they are a gooddeal of trouble to me. They've got to be cared for somehow. I wish you'dtake them. They can do a lot of useful things if they are away from theothers, and you can get twice as much work out of them as I can. Theyare stubborn with me, and it wears my soul out to deal with'em. I'veneeded your help a good many times since you've been away, but I did notlike to say much. I think, now you are going to settle down, that youought to think of your father's needs a little, too."

  Grif winced. He recalled that he had always pushed his father's problemaside in his thoughts when he had settled or solved his own. He realizedhow unfair that was. He felt the force of the Major's complaint.

  "Of course, I'll do anything I can, father, to help you; but I can'ttake a lot of negroes to a village and--"

  "That's just it! Just it, exactly! Of course you can't. I didn't intendto ask you just yet, but I want you to give up that foolish idea oftaking Katherine to town to live. She can't stand it. You are askingenough of a woman, God knows, to ask her to put up with your sort oflife anyhow, let alone asking a girl that has been respectably broughtup on a plantation to give all that up and go to a miserable littlevillage. It is not decent to live that way! Cooped up with a lot ofother folks in a string of narrow streets! I'd a good deal rather go tojail and done with it. Now, what I want and what I need you to do, isto take that other plantation--the one down, on the river--yourgrandfather's place--and take some of the hands down there and you canlet them work the place. How in the name of thunder do you suppose youand Katherine are going to live on your ridiculous salary? Salary! Itisn't enough to dignify by the name of wages--let alone salary! Y' can'tlive on it to save your lives. Katherine can't----"

  "But, father----"

  "That farm down there is plenty near enough to town for you to ride inevery single day if you want to and--look here, boy, don't you think youowe a little something to your father? I'm getting old. You don't beginto realize how hard it is on me to meet all these difficulties thatother men's sons help them with."

  The Major had struck that chord with full realization of its probableeffect, and he watched with keen relish the troubled and shamed look onthe face before him. Griffith made a movement to speak, but the Majorchecked him with a wave of the hand.

  "That farm is just going to wreck and ruin, and I haven't the strengthto attend to that and this both. Besides, these negroes have got to belooked after better. Pete is growing more and more sullen every year,and Lippy Jane's temper is getting to be a holy terror. She and Petenearly kill each other at times. They had a three-cornered fight withBradley's mulatto, Ned, the other day, and nearly disabled him. Bradleycomplained, of course. Now, just suppose Ned dies and Bradley sues me?It seems to me it is pretty hard lines when a man has a son and--"

  "But, father----"

  "Now, look here, Grif, don't 'but' me any more. I've had that house onthe other place all put in order and the negro quarters fixed up-. Thenegroes can belong to me, of course, if you still have that silly ideain your head about not wanting to own them, but you have got to help mewith them or---- Then damn it all, Grif, I don'
t intend it to be saidthat a daughter-in-law of _mine_ has to live in a nasty little rentedhouse without so much as a garden patch to it. It is simply disgracefulfor you to ask her to do it! I------"

  "Father, father!" said Grif, with his voice trembling; "I--you arealways so good to me, but I--I----"

  The old Major looked over his glasses at his son. Each understood,and each feigned that he did not. The Major assumed wrath to hide hisemotion. "Now, look here, Grif, I don't want to hear anything more aboutthis business! You make me mad! Who am I to go to for help in managingmy land and my niggers if I can't depend on you for a single thing?That's the question. Confound it all! I'm tired out, I tell you, lookingafter the lazy lot, and now you can take your share of the work. Whatam I going to do with the gang if I've got to watch'em night and day,to see that they are kept busy enough not to get into trouble with eachother, and get me in trouble with my neighbors. Just suppose Pete hadkilled Bradley's Ned, then what? Why, I'd have been sued for a $1,000and Pete would have been hung besides! I tell you, boy, I'm too old forall this worry, and I think it's about time I had a little help fromyou. I----"

  The young preacher winced again under the argument, although he knewthat in part, at least, it was made for a purpose other than the one onthe surface. In part he knew it was true. He knew that his father hadfound the task heavy and irksome. He knew that the negroes preferred hisown rule, and that they were happier and more tractable with him thanwith the old 'Squire. He knew that as the times had grown more and moreunsettled and unsettling, his father had twice had recourse to a hiredoverseer and that the results had been disastrous for all. He knew thatother sons took much of this care and responsibility from the agingshoulders of their fathers. He hesitated--and was lost. He would takethe negroes with him and live on the other place--at least one year!

  But when Miss Katherine brought with her her father's gift ofslaves--which Mr. LeRoy had tried hard to make sufficiently numerous toimpress the old Major--Grif, to his dismay, found himself overseer andpractically the owner of twenty-two negroes--and he on a salary of$200 per year! With a plantation to work, the matter of salary was, ofcourse, of minor importance. But Griffith had not failed to see glimpsesof a not far-distant future, in these past few years as he had read orheard the urgent questions of political policy which had now become soinsistent in the newer border states--a future in which this life mustbe changed. Riots and bloodshed, he knew, had followed in the train ofargument and legislative action. Slaves had run away and been trackedand returned to angry masters. But the basic question as to whether itwas right for man to hold property in man had, so far, been presented tohis mind in the form of a religious scruple and with a merely personalapplication. _Should ministers of his Church_ buy and sell black men?Griffith had definitely settled in his own mind that they should not.But whether they should inherit or acquire by marriage such property,had, until now, hardly presented a serious face to him. And now, inthe form in which they came to him, he saw no present way out of thedifficulty even had he greatly desired it.

  I have no doubt that to you, my friend, who were not born in thesetroublous times, and to you, my neighbor, who lived in another latitude,the problem looks simple enough. "He could free the slaves which werein his power," will be your first thought. "I would have done that," isyour next, and yet it is dollars to doughnuts that you would have donenothing of the kind. Oh, no! I am not reflecting upon your integrity,nor your parsimony--although I have not observed any tendency you mayhave toward dispensing with your property by gift--but to other and morecomplicated and complicating questions with which you would have foundyourself surrounded, and with which your private inclinations wouldhave come into violent collision, as Griffith Davenport discovered; andsurely, my friend, you would not care to be written up in future yearsas a violator of the law--you who value so lightly "that class ofpeople" that you have often said, quite openly, that you cared verylittle to even read about them, and deplored the fact that writers_would_ thrust them into respectable literature!

  Griffith had watched the coming storm in the southwest. He had hoped andprayed (and until now he had believed) that for himself, at least, thequestion was settled. He would never own slaves, therefore he would notbe called upon to bear any personal part in the coming struggle. But awife's property was a husband's property in Virginia, in those far-offbarbaric days, and so Griffith found himself in an anomalous position,before he knew it, for Mr. LeRoy had given Katherine her slaves as amarriage portion, and had striven to make sure that their number andquality should do honor to the daughter-in-law of her prospectivehusband's father. Mr. LeRoy had an exalted opinion of the position andimportance of the old Major--or as he always called him, of "old 'SquiahDavenpoaht."

  But so matters stood until, a few years later, an accident happened,which resulted in the death of the old Major. When the will was opened,Griffith found himself forced to confront the question of ownership ofslaves, fairly if not fully. The will left "to my beloved son, Griffith,all the slaves now living with him, together with the farm upon whichhe now lives and the old homestead; with the admonition that he care forand protect the old slaves and train and employ the young." His otherproperty was devised in accordance with his wishes, leaving to hisgrandchildren and distant relatives the other slaves and live stock.

  Meantime, as this would indicate, there had been born to Griffith severalchildren--three boys and a little baby girl--which now filled the heartsand home with life and joy.

  The exigencies of his ministerial life had so far made it necessary forhim to leave the plantation but twice. Father Prout had managed to havehis "stations" rotate from one small town to another in the immediatevicinity, and, with his growing stoutness, Mr. Davenport had taken todriving, chiefly, since Selim had been retired from active service, toand from his places of meeting week after week. Twice, for a year eachtime, he had been compelled to leave the plantation in charge ofJerry and remove to a more distant town, where the small house andunaccustomed conditions had resulted in ill health for Katherine and thechildren. But now they were on the "place" again and were owners ofmuch that required that they face larger and more complicatedresponsibilities--and what was to be done? Griffith had made uphis mind, definitely, that he did not want his sons to grow up in aslave-owning atmosphere. He had read and thought much of the struggleover the Missouri Compromise Bill. He had hoped great things fromit, and had beheld its final repeal with dismay. He had seen, so hebelieved, in it the arm that was destined to check if not to wipe outhuman slavery. How this was to be done he did not know; but that hehoped for it, for all men, he knew. For himself he was quite sure thatas a preacher, if not as a man, it was wrong. He had determined to soeducate his sons that they would not blame him for shutting them outfrom at least the inherited possibilities of the institution whichhad fallen upon him. But now, what could be done? The Major's willhad thrown the task definitely upon him and had greatly increased thedifficulties. He knew that it was against the laws of his state to freethe negroes and leave them within its borders. Exactly what the terms ofthe law were, he did not know; but it was easy to realize its need andforce. Free negroes were at once a menace to all parties concerned, bothwhite and black. They had no work, no homes, no ties of restraintand responsibility. They were amenable to no one and no one was theirfriend. They could starve, or they could steal, or they could go North.If they did the first--in a land of plenty--they were not made of thatstuff out of which human nature is fashioned, be that nature encased ina white or in a black skin. If they did the second they fared farworse than slaves--the chain-gang for home and the law for a driver hashorrors worse than even slavery--at least so thought the colored manof 1852. But if they attempted to achieve the last of the threealternatives their lot was hardest of all. They must leave home, family,wife, children, parents and friends--all that made life endurable to apatient, affectionate, simple nature--and find what? Neither friends,welcome nor work! A climate in which they suffered, a people amongstwhom their rarity and the st
rangeness of their speech and color madeof them objects of curiosity and aversion--where the very children fledfrom them in fright--little children like those whom they had nursedand fondled and who always had loved them! They would find the prejudiceagainst their color intense beyond belief, for few indeed were the menor women in the free states who would give work of any kind to thesestrange-looking and stranger-speaking creatures. Indeed, no one was moreshocked to learn than was Griffith, that in some of the border states itwas illegal to give employment to these ex-slaves. All this Griffith wasdestined to learn to his cost. He knew, already, that slaves trained ashis father's were, had no conception of hard and constant work such aswas demanded of the northern laborer. He knew that they could not hopeto compete with white workmen in a far-away field of labor even couldthey get the work to do. He knew that they would be the sport--wherethey were not the game and victims--of those white laborers. He knewthat the employer (were they so fortunate as to find one) would not beslow to learn that they accomplished less and ate more than did theirwhite rivals. That alone would, of course, settle their chances ofcompetition, and starvation or crime would again become their onlyalternative.

  A freed slave, in a country where slavery still existed, was a sorry andunhappy spectacle; but a freed slave in competition with freemen was atragedy in black!

  Griffith had fought his battle alone. It is true that he had talked muchwith his wife on the subject, and it is also true that her faith in andlove for him made her ready acquiescence in his final decision a matterof course; but with no outlook into the political world, with no mentalscope beyond the horizon prescribed as suitable for women, she couldgive him nothing but loyalty. She could echo his sentiments. She couldnot stimulate or aid his thought. Attuned to follow, she could not lead,and was equally unfitted to keep even step with him side by side. Shedid not share, nor could she understand, her husband's acute mentalmisgivings and forebodings. The few times she had spoken to her fatherof them, he had said that she need not worry. "Griffith is no fool.He'll get over this idiotic notion before long. It is reading thosedamned Yankee speeches that is the trouble with him. You just bepatient. He'll get over it. The old 'Squire knew how to cure him. Liketo know what he'd do with all those niggers? But Griffith is no fool,I tell you, if he is a Methodist." Katherine had not relished the lastremark, and she did not believe that her father quite comprehended howdeep a hold on Griffith the idea of freedom for the blacks--and freedomfrom ownership of them for himself--had taken; but she was silenced.