"What can I do, Colonel?" Doyle asked desperately. "I don't know how to do anything but farm. I can't go into the fields and work with slaves as a field hand. And I couldn't get such work to do if I'd do it. I'll die before I'll come down to it. I might rent a little farm alongside of a free nigger. But he can beat me at that game. He can live on less and work longer hours than I do. He'll underbid me as a cropper. He can live and pay the owner four-fifths of the crop. I'd starve. What am I goin' to do?"

"Had you thought of moving West into one of the new Territories just opening?"

"Yessir. I'd thought of it. But how am I goin' to get there with a wife and five children?"

Lee rose and looked about the place thoughtfully.

"How much could you realize from the sale of your things?"

Doyle scratched his head doubtfully.

"I ain't got no idee, sir. I'm afraid not much. Ye see it's just home stuff. The old 'oman's awful smart. She raises enough chickens and turkeys and ducks and guineas to eat, and she sells a few eggs and young chickens and turkeys when they brings anything in the market. I got six sheep, a cow, a calf, a mule, a couple o' pigs in the pen. But they won't bring much money. Ye see I never felt so poor ez long ez I had a home where I can live independent like. That house ain't much, sir. But you ain't no idea how deep down in my heart it's got."

He paused and looked at it. The Colonel followed his gaze. It was a small frame structure standing in a yard filled with trees. A one-story affair with a sharp, gabled attic. Two dormer windows projected from the high roof and a solid brick chimney at each end gave it dignity. A narrow porch came straight out from the front door. On either side of the porch were built wooden benches and behind them on a lattice grew a luxuriant rambler rose. It was still blooming richly in the warm September sun.

"Ye see, sir," Doyle went on, "what we've got that's worth havin' can't be sold. I love the smell o' them roses. I wake up in the night and the breeze brings it in the window and it puts me to sleep like an old song my mother used to sing when I was a little shaver—"

He stopped short.

"I didn't mean to snivel, sir."

"I understand, my friend. No apologies are necessary."

"And that big scuppernong grape vine out there in the garden—I couldn't sell that. I planted it fifteen years ago. Folks told us we was too fur north here fur it to grow good. But I knowed better. You can see its covered a place as big ez the house. And you can smell them ripe grapes a hundred yards before ye get to the gate. I make a little wine outen 'em. We have 'em to eat a whole month. That garden keeps us goin' winter and summer. You see them five rows of flat turnips and the ruttabaggers beside 'em? I've cabbage enough banked under them pine tops to make a fifty-gallon barrel o' kraut and give us cabbage with our bacon all winter. We've got turnip greens, onions and collards. I've got corn and wheat in my crib and bacon enough to last me till next year. I raise the finest watermelons and mushmelons in the county and it ain't much trouble to live here. I never knowed how well off I wuz till the Sheriff come and told me I had to go."

"You're in the prime of life. You can go to a new country and begin over again. Why not?"

"If I could get there. I reckon I could."

He stopped short as his wife appeared by his side. She had heard Colonel Lee's last question.

"Of course, you can begin over again. Haven't we got three of the finest boys the Lord ever give a mother? They ain't got no chance here nohow. My baby boy's one o' the smartest youngsters in the county. Ef old Andy Jackson wuz a poor boy an' got ter be President, he might do the same thing ef we give him a chance—"

"Yes, I reckon we could, ef we had a chance," Doyle agreed doubtfully. "But it would be a hard pull to leave my ole Virginy home. You know that would pull you, Colonel—now wouldn't it?"

"Yes, it would," was the earnest answer.

"You see I wuz born in this country an' me daddy before me. I like it here. I like the feel of the air in the fall. There's a flock o' ducks now circlin' over that bend o' the river. The geese are comin'. I heard 'em honk high up in the sky last night. I like my oysters and terrapin. I like to shoot ducks and geese, rabbits and quail. I like the smell o' the water. I like the smell o' these fields. I like the way the sun shines and the winds blow down here. It's in my blood."

"But you'll go if you can get away," his wife interrupted cheerfully.

Two little girls timidly drew near. Their faces were washed clean and their shining blonde hair gleamed in circles of golden light as the rays of the setting sun caught it.

Lee smiled, took them both in his arms and kissed them.

A tear softened his eyes as he placed them on the ground.

"You're darling little dolls. No wonder your mother loves you."

"Run back in the house now, honeys," the mother said.

The children slowly obeyed, glancing back at the great man who had kissed them. They wondered why their daddy hadn't kissed them oftener.

"What do you think we ought to do, Colonel Lee?" the woman asked eagerly.

"I can tell you what I would do, Madame, in your place—"

"What?"

The husband and wife spoke the word in chorus.

"I'd go West and begin again."

"But how'm I goin' to get away, sir?" the man asked blankly.

"Sell your things for the best price you can get and I'll loan you the balance of the money you'll need."

"Will you, sir?" the woman gasped.

"I ain't got no security for ye, Colonel—" Doyle protested.

"You are my friend and neighbor, Mr. Doyle. You're in distress. You don't need security. I'll take your note, sir, without endorsement."

"Glory to God!" the mother cried with face uplifted in a prayer of thanksgiving.

Doyle couldn't speak for a moment. He looked out over the roadway and got control of his feelings before trying. There was a lump in his throat which made his speech thick when at last he managed to grasp Lee's hand.

"I dunno how to thank you, sir."

"It will be all right, Mr. Doyle. Look after the sale of your things and I'll find out the best way for you to get there and let you know."

He mounted his horse and rode away into the fading sunset as they watched him through dimmed eyes.



CHAPTER VIII

Lee had promised Edmund Ruffin his answer early in the week. Ruffin had just ridden up the hill and dismounted.

Mrs. Marshall, the Colonel's sister, on a visit from Baltimore, fled at his approach.

"Excuse me, Mary," she cried to Mrs. Lee. "I just can't stand these ranting fire-eating politicians. They make me ill. I'll go to my room."

She hurried up the stairway and left the frail mistress of the house to meet her formidable guest.

Ruffin was the product of the fierce Abolition Crusade. Hot-tempered, impulsive, intemperate in his emotions and their expression, he was the perfect counterpart of the men who were working night and day in the North to create a condition of mob feeling out of which a civil conflict might grow. Uncle Tom's Cabin had set him on fire with new hatreds. His vocabulary of profanity had been enlarged by the addition of every name in the novel. He had been compelled to invent new expressions to fit these characters. He damned them individually and collectively. He cursed each trait of each character, good and bad. He cursed the good points with equal unction and equal emphasis. In fact the good traits in Mrs. Stowe's people seemed to carry him to greater heights of wrath and profanity than the bad ones. He dissected each part of each character's anatomy, damned each part, put the parts together and damned the collection. And then he damned the whole story, characters, plot and scenes to the lowest pit and cursed the devil for not building a lower one to which he might consign it. And in a final burst of passion he always ended by damning himself for his utter inability to express anything which he really felt.

With all his ugly language, which he reserved for conversation with men, he was the soul of consideration for a woman. Mrs. Lee had no fear of any rude expression from his lips. She didn't like him because she felt in his personality the touch of mob insanity which the Slavery question had kindled. She dreaded this appeal to blind instinct and belief. With a woman's intuition she felt the tragic possibility of such leadership North and South.

She saw his leonine head and shaggy hair silhouetted against the red glow of the west with a shiver at its symbolism, but met him with the cordial greeting which every Southern woman gave instinctively to the friend of her husband.

"Come in, Mr. Ruffin," she welcomed.

He bowed over her hand and spoke in the soft drawl of the Southern planter.

"Thank you, Madame. I'm greatly honored in having you greet me at the door."

"Colonel Lee is expecting you."

The planter drew himself up with a touch of pride and importance.

"Yes'm. I sent him word I would be here at three. I was detained in Washington. But I succeeded in convincing the editor of The Daily Globe that my mission was one of grave importance. I not only desire to wish Colonel Lee God-speed on his journey to West Point and congratulate him on the honor conferred on Virginia by his appointment to the command of our Cadets—but—"

He paused, smiled and glanced toward the portico, as if he were holding back an important secret.

Mrs. Lee hastened to put him at his ease.

"You can trust my discretion in any little surprise you may have for the Colonel."

Ruffin bowed.

"I'm sure I can, Madame. I'm sure I can."

He dropped his voice.

"You know perhaps that I sent him a few days ago a scurrilous attack on the South by a Yankee woman—a new novel?"

"He received it."

"Has he read it?"

"Carefully. He has read it twice."

"Good!"

The planter breathed deeply, squared his shoulders and paced the floor with a single quick turn. He stopped before Mrs. Lee and spoke in sharp emphasis.

"I'm going to spring a little surprise on the public, Madame! A sensation that will startle the country, and God knows we need a little shaking just now—"

He paused and whispered.

"I'm so sure of what the Colonel will say that I've brought a reporter from the Washington Daily Globe with me—"

Mrs. Lee lifted her hand in dismay.

"He is here?"

"He is seated on the lawn just outside, Madame," Ruffin hastened to reassure her. "I thought at the last moment I'd better have him wait until I received Colonel Lee's consent to the interview."

"I'm glad you did."

"Oh, it will be all right, I assure you!"

"He might not wish to see a reporter—"

"So I told the young man."

"I'm afraid—"

"I'll pave the way, Madame. I'll pave the way. Colonel Lee and I are life-long friends. Will you kindly announce me?"

"The Colonel has just ridden up to the stables to give some orders about his horses. He'll be here in a moment."

Lee stepped briskly into the room and extended his hand.

"It's you, Ruffin. My apologies. I was called out to see a neighbor. I should have been here to receive you."

"No apologies, Colonel, Mrs. Lee has been most gracious."

The mistress of the house smiled.

"Make yourself at home, Mr. Ruffin. I shall hope to see you at dinner."

Ruffin stood respectfully until Mrs. Lee had disappeared.

"Pray be seated," Lee invited.

Ruffin seated himself on the couch and watched his host keenly.

Lee took a cigar from the mantel and offered it.

"A cigar, Ruffin?"

"Thanks."

"Now make yourself entirely at home, my good friend."

The planter lighted the cigar, blew a long cloud of smoke and settled in his seat.

"I'm glad to learn from Mrs. Lee that you have read the book I sent you—the Abolitionist firebrand."

"Yes."

Lee quietly walked to the mantel and got the volume.

"I have it here."

He turned the leaves thoughtfully.

Ruffin laughed.

"And, what do you think of it?"

The Colonel was silent a moment.

"Well, for those who like that kind of book—it's the kind of book they will like."

"Exactly!" Ruffin cried, slapping his knee with a blow that bruised it. "And you're the man in all the South to tell the fool who likes that sort of book just how big a fool he is!"

Lee opened the volume again and turned the pages slowly.

"Ruffin, I don't read many novels—"

He paused as if in deep study.

"But this one I have read twice."

"I'm glad you did, sir," the planter snapped.

"And I must confess it stunned me."

"Stunned you?"

"Yes."

"How?"

"When I finished reading it, I felt like the overgrown boy who stubbed his toe. It hurt too bad to laugh. And I'm too big to cry."

"You amaze me, sir."

"That's the way I feel, my friend."

He paused, walked to the window, and gazed out at the first lights that began to flicker in the windows of the Capitol across the river.

"That book," he went on evenly, "is an appeal to the heart of the world against Slavery. It is purely an appeal to sentiment, to the emotions, to passion, if you will—the passions of the mob and the men who lead mobs. And it's terrible. As terrible as an army with banners. I heard the throb of drums through its pages. It will work the South into a frenzy. It will make millions of Abolitionists in the North who could not be reached by the coarser methods of abuse. It will prepare the soil for a revolution. If the right man appears at the right moment with a lighted torch—"

"That's just why, sir, as the foremost citizen of Virginia, you must answer this slander. I have brought a reporter from the Globe with me for that purpose. Shall I call him,"

"A reporter from a daily paper with a circulation of fifteen thousand?"

"Your word, Colonel Lee, will be heard at this moment to the ends of the earth, sir!"

"In a newspaper interview?"

"Yes, sir."

"Nonsense."

"It's your character that will count."

"Such an answer would be a straw pitched against a hurricane. I am told that this book has already reached a circulation of half a million copies and it has only begun. That means already three million readers. To answer this book my pen should be better trained than my sword—"

"It is, sir, if you'll only use it."

"The South has only trained swords. And not so many of them as we think. We have no writers. We have no literature. We have no champions in the forum of the world's thought. We are being arraigned at the judgment bar of mankind and we are dumb. It's appalling."

"That's why you must speak for us. Speak in our defense. Speak with a tongue of flame—"

"I am not trained for speech, Ruffin. And the pen is mightier than the sword. I've never realized it before. The South will soon have the civilized world arraigned against her. The North with a thousand pens is stirring the faiths, the prejudices and the sentiments of the millions. This appeal is made in the face of History, Reason and Law. But its force will be as the gravitation of the earth, beyond the power of resistance, unless we can check it in time."

"When it comes to resistance," Ruffin snapped, "that's another question. The Yankees are a race of damned cowards and poltroons, sir. They won't fight."

Lee shook his head gravely.

"I've been in the service more than a quarter of a century, my friend. I've seen a lot of Yankees under fire. I've seen a lot of them die. And I know better. Your idea of a Yankee is about as correct as the Northern notion of Southern fighters. A notion they're beginning to exploit in cartoons which show an effeminate lady killer with an umbrella stuck in the end of his musket and a negro mixing mint juleps for him."

"We've got to denounce those slanders. I'm a man of cool judgment and I never lose my temper—"

He leaped to his feet purple with rage.

"But, by God, sir, we can't sit quietly under the assault of these narrow-minded bigots. You must give the lie to this infamous book!"

"How can I, my friend?"

"Doesn't she make heroes of law breakers?"

"Surely."

"Is there no reverence for law left in this country?"

"In Courts of Justice, yes. But not in the courts of passion, prejudice, beliefs, sentiment. The writers of sentiment sing the praises of law breakers—"

"But there can be no question of the right or wrong of this book. It is an infamous slander. I deny and impeach it!"

"I'm afraid that's all we can do, Ruffin—deny and impeach it. When we come down to brass tacks we can't answer it. From their standpoint the North is right. From our standpoint we are right, because our rights are clear under the Constitution. Slavery is not a Southern institution; it is a national inheritance. It is a national calamity. It was written into the Constitution by all the States, North and South. And if the North is ignorant of our rights under the laws of our fathers, we have failed to enlighten them—"

"We won't be dictated to, sir, by a lot of fanatics and hypocrites."

"Exactly, we stand on our dignity. We deny and we are ready to fight. But we will not argue. As an abstract proposition in ethics or economics, Slavery does not admit of argument. It is a curse. It's on us and we can't throw it off at once. My quarrel with the North is that they do not give us their sympathy and their help in our dilemma. Instead they rave and denounce and insult us. They are even more responsible than we for the existence of Slavery, since their ships, not ours, brought the negro to our shores. Slavery is an outgrown economic folly, a bar to progress, a political and social curse to the white race. It must die of its own weakness, South, as it died of its own weakness, North. It is now in the process of dying. The South has freed over three hundred thousand slaves by the voluntary act of the master. If these appeals of the mob leader to the spirit of the mob can be stopped, a solution will be found."

"It will never be found in the ravings of Abolitionists."

"Nor in the hot tempers of our Southern partisans, Ruffin. Look in the mirror, my good friend. Chattel Slavery is doomed because of the superior efficiency of the wage system. Morals have nothing to do with it. The Captain of Industry abolished Chattel Slavery in the North, not the preacher or the agitator. He established the wage system in its place because it is a mightier weapon in his hand. It is subject to but one law. The iron law of supply and demand. Labor is a commodity to be bought and sold to the highest bidder. And the highest bidder is at liberty to bid lower than the price of bread, clothes, fuel and shelter, if he chooses. This system is now moving Southward like a glacier from the frozen heart of the Northern mountains, eating all in its path. It is creeping over Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri. It will slowly engulf Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee and the end is sure. Its propelling force is not moral. It is soulless. It is purely economic. The wage earner, driven by hunger and cold, by the fear of the loss of life itself—is more efficient in his toil than the care-free negro slave of the South, who is assured of bread, of clothes, of fuel and shelter, with or without work. Slavery does not admit of argument, my friend. To argue about it is to destroy it."

"I disagree with you, sir!" Ruffin thundered.

"I know you do. But you can't answer this book."

"It can be answered, sir."

Lee paced the floor, his arms folded behind his back, paused and watched Ruffin's flushed face. He shook his head again.

"The book is unanswerable, because it is an appeal to emotion based on a study of Slavery in the abstract. If no allowance be made for the tender and humane character of the Southern people or the modification of statutory law by the growth of public sentiment, its imaginary scenes are within the bounds of the probable. The story is crude, but it is told with singular power without a trace of bitterness. The blind ferocity of Garrison, who sees in every slaveholder a fiend, nowhere appears in its pages. On the other hand, Mrs. Stowe has painted one slaveholder as gentle and generous. Simon Legree, her villain, is a Yankee who has moved South and taken advantage of the power of a master to work evil. Such men have come South. Such things might be done. It is precisely this possibility that makes Slavery indefensible. You know this. And I know it."

"You astound me, Colonel."

"Yes, I'm afraid I do. I'd like to speak a message to the South about this book. I've a great deal more to say to my own people than to our critics."

Ruffin rose, thrust his hands in his pockets, walked to the window, turned suddenly and faced his host.

"But look here, Colonel Lee, I'm damned if I can agree with you, sir! Suppose Slavery is wrong—an economic fallacy and a social evil—I don't say it is, mind you. Just suppose for the sake of argument that it is. We don't propose to be lectured on this subject by our inferiors in the North. The children of the men who stole these slaves from Africa and sold them to us at a profit!"

Lee laughed softly.

"The sins of an inferior cannot excuse the mistakes of a superior. The man of superior culture and breeding should lead the world in progress. What has come over us in the South, Ruffin? Your father and mine never defended Slavery. They knew it was to them, their children and this land, a curse. It was a blessing only to the savage who was being taught the rudiments of civilization at a tremendous cost to his teacher. The first Abolition Societies were organized in the South. Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Randolph, all the great leaders of the old South, the men whose genius created this republic—all denounced Slavery. They told us that it is a poison, breeding pride and tyranny of character, that it corrupts the mind of the child, that it degrades labor, wears out our land, destroys invention, and saps our ideal of liberty. And yet we have begun to defend it."

"Because we are being hounded, traduced and insulted by the North, yes—"

"Yes, but also because we must have more land."

"We've as much right in the West as the North."

"That's not the real reason we demand the right of entry. We are exhausting the soil of the South by our slipshod farming on great plantations where we use old-fashioned tools and slave labor. We refuse to study history. Ancient empires tried this system and died. The Carthagenians developed it to perfection and fell before the Romans. The Romans borrowed it from Carthage. It destroyed the small farms and drove out the individual land owners. It destroyed respect for trades and crafts. It strangled the development of industrial art. And when the test came Roman civilization passed. You hot-heads under the goading of Abolition crusaders now blindly propose to build the whole structure of Southern Society on this system."

"We've no choice, sir."

"Then we must find one. Slowly but surely the clouds gather for the storm. We catch only the first rumblings now but it's coming."

Ruffin flared.

"Now listen to me, Colonel. I'm a man of cool judgment and I never lose my temper, sir—"

He choked with passion, recovered and rushed on.

"If they ever dare attack us, we won't need writers. We'll draw our swords and thrash them! The South is growing rich and powerful."

Lee lifted his hand in a quick gesture of protest.

"A popular delusion, my friend. Under Slave labor the South is growing poorer daily. While the Northern States, under the wage system, ten times more efficient, are draining the blood and treasure of Europe and growing richer by leaps and bounds. Norfolk, Richmond and Charleston should have been the great cities of the Eastern Seaboard. They are as yet unimportant towns in the world commerce. Boston, Philadelphia and New York have become the centers of our business life, of our trade, our culture, our national power. While slavery is scratching the surface of our soil with old-fashioned plows, while we quit work at twelve o'clock every Saturday, spend our Sundays at church, and set two negroes to help one do nothing Monday morning, the North is sweeping onward in the science of agriculture. While they invent machines which double their crops, cut their labor down a hundred per cent, we are fighting for new lands in the West to exhaust by our primitive methods. The treasures of the earth yet lie in our mines untouched by pick or spade. Our forests stand unbroken—vast reaches of wilderness. The slave is slow and wasteful. Wage labor, quick, efficient. Our chief industry is the breeding of a race of feverish politicians."

"You know, Colonel Lee, as well as I do that Slavery in the South has been a blessing to the negro."

Lee moved his head in quick assent.

"I admit that Slavery took the negro from the jungle, from a slavery the most cruel known to human history, that it has taught him the use of tools, the science of agriculture, the worship of God, the first lessons in the alphabet of humanity. But unless we can now close this school, my friend, somebody is going to try to divide this Union some day—"

Ruffin struck his hands together savagely.

"The quicker the better, I say! If the children of the men who created this republic are denied equal rights under its laws and in its Territories, then I say, to your tents, oh, Israel!"

"And do you know what that may mean?"

"A Southern and a Northern Nation. Let them come!"

"The States have been knit together slowly, but inevitably by steam and electricity. I can conceive of no greater tragedy than an attempt to-day to divide them."

"I can conceive of no greater blessing!" Ruffin fairly shouted.

"So William Lloyd Garrison, the leader of Abolition, is saying in his paper The Liberator. And, Ruffin, unless we can lock up some hot-heads in the South and such fanatics as Garrison in the North, the mob, not the statesman, is going to determine the laws and the policy of this country. Somebody will try to divide the Union. And then comes the deluge! When I think of it, the words of Thomas Jefferson ring through my soul like an alarm bell in the night. 'I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just and that His justice cannot sleep forever. Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than these black people shall be free—'"

Ruffin lifted his hand in a commanding gesture.

"Don't omit his next sentence, sir—'nor is it less certain, that the two races, equally free, cannot live under the same government—'"

"Exactly," Lee answered solemnly. "And that is the only reason why I have ever allowed myself to own a slave for a moment—the insoluble problem of what to do with him when freed. The one excuse for Slavery which the South can plead without fear before the judgment bar of God is the blacker problem which their emancipation will create. Unless it can be brought about in a miracle of patience, wisdom and prayer."

He paused and smiled at Ruffin's forlorn expression.

"Will you call your reporter now to take my views?"

"No, sir," the planter growled. "I've changed my mind."

The Colonel laughed softly.

"I thought you might."

Ruffin gazed in silence through the window at the blinking lights in Washington, turned and looked moodily at his calm host. He spoke in a slow, dreamy monotone, his eyes on space seeing nothing:

"Colonel Lee, this country is hell bent and hell bound. I can see no hope for it."

Lee lifted his head with firm faith.

"Ruffin, this country is in God's hands—and He will do what's right—"

"That's just what I'm afraid, sir!" Ruffin mused. "Oh, no—I—don't mean that exactly. I mean that we must anticipate—"

"The wisdom of God?"

"That we must prepare to meet our enemies, sir."

"I agree with you. And I'm going to do it. I've been doing a lot of thinking and soul searching since you gave me this troublesome book to read—"

He stopped short, rose and drew the old-fashioned bell cord.

Ben appeared in full blue cloth and brass buttons, on duty again as butler.

"Yassah—"

"I'm glad to see you, Ben. You're feeling yourself again?"

"Yassah. Praise God, I'se back at my place once mo', sah."

The master lifted his hand in warning.

"Take care of yourself now. No more risks. You're not as young as you once were."

"Thankee, sah."

"Ask Mrs. Lee to bring me the document on my desk. Find Sam and fetch him here."

Ben bowed.

"Yassah. Right away, sah."

Lee turned to his guest genially.

"I'm going to ask you to witness what I'm about to do, Ruffin. And you mustn't take offense. We differ about Slavery and politics in the abstract, but whatever our differences on the surface, you are an old Virginia planter and I trust we shall always be friends."

The two men clasped hands and Ruffin spoke with deep emotion.

"I am honored in your friendship, Colonel Lee. However I may differ with you about the Union, we agree on one thing, that the old Dominion is the noblest state on which the sun has ever shown!"

Lee closed his eyes as if in prayer.

"On that we are one. Old Virginia, the mother of Presidents and of states, as I leave her soil I humbly pray that God's blessings may ever rest upon her!"

"So say I, sir," Ruffin responded heartily. "And I'll try to do the cussin' for her while you do the praying."

Mrs. Lee entered and handed to her husband a folded document, as Ben came from the kitchen with Sam, who bowed and grinned to every one in the room.

Lee spoke in low tones to his wife.

"Ask the young people to come in for a moment, my dear."

Mrs. Lee crossed quickly to the library door and called:

"Come in, children, Colonel Lee wishes to see you all."

Mary, Stuart, Custis, Phil, Robbie and Sid pressed into the hall in curious, expectant mood. Mrs. Marshall knew that Ruffin was still there, but her curiosity got the better of her aversion. She followed the children, only to run squarely into Ruffin.

He was about to speak in his politest manner when she stiffened and passed him.

Ruffin's eye twinkled. He knew that she saw him. She hated him for his political views. She also knew that he hated her husband, Judge Marshall, with equal cordiality. His pride was too great to feel the slightest hurt at her attempt to ignore him. She was a fanatic on the subject of the Union. All right, he was a fanatic on the idea of an independent South. They were even. Let it be so.

With a toss of his head, he turned toward Lee who had seated himself at the table behind the couch.

The children were chatting and laughing as they entered. A sudden hush fell on them as they caught the serious look on the Colonel's face. He was writing rapidly. He stopped and fixed a seal on the paper which he held in his hand. He read it carefully, lifted his eyes to the group that had drawn near and said:

"Children, my good friend, Mr. Ruffin, has called to-day to bid us God-speed on our journey North. And he has asked me to answer Uncle Tom's Cabin. I've called you to witness the only answer I know how to make at this moment."

He paused and turned toward Sam.

"Come here, Sam."

The young negro rolled his eyes in excited wonder about the room and laughed softly at nothing as he approached the table.

"Yassah, Marse Robert."

"How old are you, Sam?"

"Des twenty, sah."

"I had meant to wait until you were twenty-one for this, but I have decided to act to-day. You will arrange to leave here and go with us as far as New York."

The negro bowed gratefully.

"Yassah, thankee sah, I sho did want ter go norf wid you, sah, but I hated to axe ye."

Lee handed Sam the document.

"You will go with me a free man, my boy. You are the only slave I yet hold in my own right. I have just given you your deed of emancipation. From this hour you are your own master. May God bless you and keep you in health and strength and give you long life and much happiness."

Sam stared at the paper and then at the kindly eyes of his old master. A sob caught his voice as he stammered:

"May God bless you, Marse Robert—"

Ben lifted his hands in benediction and his voice rang in the solemn cadence of the prophet and seer:

"And let the glory of His face shine upon him forever!"

Mrs. Marshall stooped and kissed her brother.

"You're a true son of Virginia, Robert, in this beautiful answer you make to-day to all our enemies."

She rose and faced Ruffin with square antagonism.

Lee turned to the old butler.

"And Ben, tell all our servants of the estate that, under the will of Mrs. Lee's father I will in due time set them free. I would do so to-day if the will had not fixed the date."

Ben bowed gravely.

"I'se proud to be your servant, Marse Robert and Missis, and when my freedom comes frum yo' hands, I'll be prouder still to serve you always."

With head erect Ben proudly led the dazed young freedman from the hall to the kitchen where his reception was one of mixed wonder and pity.

There fell a moment's awkward silence, broken at last by Stuart's clear, boyish voice. He saw Ruffin's embarrassment. He knew the man's fiery temper and wondered at his restraint.

"Well, Mr. Ruffin," Stuart began, "we may not see as clearly as Colonel Lee to-day, but he's my commander, sir, and I'll say he's right."

Ruffin faced Lee with a look of uncompromising antagonism and fairly shot his words.

"And for the millions of the South, I say he's wrong. There's a time for all things. And this is not the time for such an act. From the appearance of this book you can rest assured the emancipation of slaves in the South will cease. We will never be bullied into freeing our slaves by slander and insult. Colonel Lee's example will not be followed. The fanatics of the North have begun to spit on our faces. There's but one answer to an insult—and that's a blow!"

Lee stepped close to the planter, laid one hand gently on his shoulder, searched his angry eyes for a moment and slowly said:

"And thrice is he armed, my friend, who hath his quarrel just. I set my house in order before the first blow falls."

Ruffin smiled and threw off the ugly strain.

"I'm sorry, sir," he said with friendly indifference, "that my mission has been a failure."

"And I'm sorry we can't agree."

"I won't be able to stay to dinner, Mrs. Lee, and I bid you all good evening."

With a wave of his hand in a gesture behind which lurked the tingling of taut nerves, he turned and left.

The beat of his horse's hoof echoed down the road with a sharp, angry crack.



CHAPTER IX

On Sunday the whole plantation went to Church. The negroes sat in the gallery and listened with rapt attention to the service. They joined its ritual and its songs with their white folks in equal sincerity and more profound emotion.

At the crossroads the stream of carriages, carts and buggies and horseback riders parted. To the right, the way led to the Episcopal Church, the old English establishment of the State, long since separated from secular authority, yet still bearing the seal of county aristocracy. Colonel Lee was a devout member of this church. Mrs. Lee was the inspiration of its charities and the soul of its activities.

A few of the negroes of the estate attended it with the master and mistress of Arlington. By far the larger number turned to the left at the cross roads and found their way to the Antioch Baptist Church. The simplicity of its service, the fervor of its singing, and above all the emotional call of its revivals which swept the country each summer appealed to the warm-hearted Africans. They took to the Baptist and Methodist churches as ducks to water. The master made no objection to the exercise of their right to worship God as their consciences called. He encouraged their own preachers to hold weekly prayer meetings and exhort his people in the assembling places of the servants.

Nor did he object to the dance which Sam, who was an Episcopalian, invariably organized on the nights following prayer and exhortation.

This last Sunday was one of tender farewells to friends and neighbors. They crowded about the Colonel after the services. They wished him health and happiness and success in his new work.

The last greeting he got from an old bent neighbor of ninety years. It brought a cloud to his brow. All day and into the night the thought persisted and its shadow chilled the hours of his departure. James Nelson was his name, of the ancient family of the Nelsons of Yorktown.

He held Lee's hand a long time and blinked at him with a pair of keen, piercing eyes—keen from a spiritual light that burned within. He spoke in painful deliberation as if he were translating a message.

"I am glad you are going to West Point, Colonel Lee. You will have time for thinking. You will have time to study the art of war as great minds must study it alone if they lead armies to victory. Generals are not developed in the saddle on our plains fighting savages. Our country is going to need a leader of supreme genius. I saw him in a vision, the night I read in the Richmond Enquirer that you had been called to West Point. I shall not see you again. I am walking now into the sunset. Soon the shadows will enfold me and I shall sleep the long sleep. I am content. I have lived. I have loved. I have succeeded and failed. I have swept the gamut of human passion and human emotion. I have no right to more. Yet I envy you the glory of manhood in the crisis that is coming. May the God of our fathers keep you and teach you and bless you is my prayer."

Lee was too deeply moved for words to reply. He pressed his old friend's hand, held it in silence and turned away.

The young people rode horseback. Never in his life had Phil seen anything to equal the easy grace with which these Southern girls sat their horses. Their mothers before them had been born in the saddle. Their ease, their grace was not an acquirement of the teacher. It was bred in the bone.

When a boy challenged a girl for a race, the challenge was instantly accepted. Their saddles were made of the finest leather which the best saddle makers of England and America could find. Their girths were set with double silver buckles. A saddle never turned.

When the long procession reached the gates of Arlington, it seemed to Phil that half the congregation were going to stop for dinner. A large part of them did. Every friend and neighbor who pressed Colonel Lee's hand, or the hand of his wife, had been invited.

When they reached the Hall and Library to talk, their conversation covered a wide range of interest. The one topic tabooed was scandal. It might be whispered behind closed doors. It was never the subject of conversation in an assembly of friends and neighbors in the home. They talked of the rich harvest. They discussed the changes in the fortunes of their mutual friends. They had begun to demand better roads. They discussed the affairs of the County, the Church, the State. The ladies chatted of fashions, of course. But they also discussed the latest novels of George Eliot with keen interest and true insight into their significance in the development of English literature. They knew their Dickens, Thackeray and Scott almost by heart—especially Scott. They expressed their opinions of the daring work of the new author with enthusiasm. Some approved; others had doubts. They did not yet know that George Eliot was a woman.

The chief topic of conversation among the men was politics, State and National. The problems of the British Empire came in for a share of the discussion. These men not only read Burke and Hume, Dickens and Scott, they read the newspapers of England and they kept up with the program of English political parties as their fathers had. And they quoted their opinions as authority for a younger generation. On the shelves of the library could be seen the classics in sober bindings and sprinkled with them a few French authors of distinction.

Over all brooded the spirit of a sincere hospitality, gentle, cordial, simple, generous. They did not merely possess homes, they loved their homes. The two largest words in the tongue which they spoke were Duty and Honor. They were not in a hurry. The race for wealth had never interested them. They took time to play, to rest, to worship God, to chat with their neighbors, to enjoy a sunset. They came of a race of world-conquering men and they felt no necessity for hurrying or apologizing for their birthright.

It was precisely this attitude of mind which made the savage attack of the Abolitionists so far-reaching in its possible results.



CHAPTER X

The morning of the departure dawned with an overcast sky, the prophecy of winter in the gray clouds that hung over the surface of the river. A chill mist, damp and penetrating, crept up the heights from the water's edge and veiled the city from view.

Something in the raw air bruised afresh the thought of goodbye to the Southland. The threat of cold in Virginia meant the piling of ice and snow in the North. Not a sparrow chirped in the hedges. Only a crow, passing high in the dull sky, called his defiance of wind and weather.

The Colonel made his final round of inspection to see that his people were provided against the winter. Behind each servant's cottage, a huge pile of wood was stacked. The roofs were in perfect order. The chimneys were pouring columns of smoke. It hung low at first but rolled away at the touch of the breeze from the North.

With Mrs. Lee he visited the aged and the sick. The thing that brought the smile to each withered mouth was the assurance of their love and care always.

Among the servants Sam held the center of interest. The wonderful, doubtful, yet fascinating thing had come to him. He had been set free. In each heart was the wish and with it fear of the future. The younger ones laughed and frankly envied him. The older ones wagged their heads doubtfully.

Old Ben expressed the best feelings of the wiser as he took Sam's hand for a fatherly word. He had finished the packing in an old cowhide trunk which Custis had given him.

"We's all gwine ter watch ye, boy, wid good wishes in our hearts and a whole lot er misgivin's a playin' roun' in our min'."

"Don't yer worry 'bout me, Uncle Ben. I'se all right."

He paused and whispered.

"Ye didn't know dat Marse Robert done gimme five hundred dollars in gol'—did ye?"

"Five hundred dollars in gol'!" Ben gasped.

Sam drew the shining yellow eagles from the bag in his pocket and jingled them before the old man's eyes.

"Dar it is."

Ben touched it reverently.

"Praise God fer de good folks He give us."

"I'se er proud nigger, I is. I'se sorry fur dem dat b'longs to po' folks."

Ben looked at him benignly.

"Don't you be too proud, boy. You'se powerful young and foolish. Yer des barely got sense enough ter git outen a shower er rain. Dat money ain't gwine ter las yer always."

"No, but man, des watch my smoke when I git up North. Yer hear frum me, yer will."

"I hopes I hear de right news."

Sam replaced his coin with a touch of authority in possession.

"Don't yer worry 'bout me no mo'. I'se a free man now an' I gwine ter come into de Kingdom."

The last important task done by the Colonel before taking the train for New York was the delivery to his lawyers of instructions for the removal of the Doyles and the placing in his hands sufficient funds for their journey.

He spent a day in Washington investigating the chances of the new settler securing a quarter section of land in Miami County, Kansas, the survey of which had been completed. He selected this County on the Missouri border to please Mrs. Doyle. She wished to live as near the line of old Virginia's climate as possible and in a country with trees.

Doyle promised to lose no time in disposing of his goods. The father, mother, three sons and two little girls were at Arlington to bid the Colonel and his family goodbye. They were not a demonstrative people but their affection for their neighbor and friend could not be mistaken.

The mother's eyes followed him with no attempt to hide her tears. She wiped them away with her handkerchief. And went right on crying and wiping them again. The boys were too shy to press forward in the crowd and grasp the Colonel's hand.

On arrival in New York the party stopped at the new Hotel Astor on Broadway. Colonel Lee had promised to spend a day at Fort Hamilton, his old command. But it was inconvenient to make the trip until the following morning.

Besides, he had important business to do for Sam. He had sent two of the servants, whom he had emancipated, to Liberia, and he planned the same journey for Sam. He engaged a reservation for him on a steamer sailing for Africa, and returned to the hotel at nine o'clock ready to leave for Fort Hamilton.

He was compelled to wait for Sam's return from the boarding house for colored people on Water Street where he had been sent by the proprietor of the Astor. Not even negro servants were quartered in a first-class hotel in New York or any other Northern city.

Sam arrived at half-past nine, and the Colonel strolled down Broadway with him to the little park at Bowling Green. He found a seat and bade Sam sit down beside him.

The boy watched the expression on his old master's face with dread. He had a pretty clear idea what this interview was to be about and he had made up his mind on the answer. His uncle, who had been freed five years before, had written him a glowing letter about Liberia.

He dreaded the subject.

"You know, of course, Sam," the Colonel began, "that your life is now in your own hands and that I can only advise you as a friend."

"An' I sho's glad ter have ye he'p me, Marse Robert."

"I'm going to give you the best advice I can. I'm going to advise you to do exactly what I would do if I were in your place."

"Yassah."

"If I were you, Sam, I wouldn't stay in this country. I'd go back to the land of my black fathers, to its tropic suns and rich soil. You can never be a full-grown man here. The North won't have you as such. The hotel wouldn't let you sleep under its roof, in spite of my protest that you were my body-servant. In the South the old shadow of your birth will be with you. If you wish to lift up your head and be a man it can't be here. No matter what comes in the future. If every black man, woman and child were set free to-morrow, there are not enough negroes to live alone. The white man will never make you his equal in the world he is building. I've secured your passage to Liberia and I will pay for it without touching the money which I gave you. What do you think of it?"

Sam scratched his head and looked away embarrassed. He spoke timidly at first, but with growing assurance.

"I'se powerful 'fraid dat Liberia's a long way frum home, Marse Robert."

"It is. But if you wish to be a full-grown man, it's your chance to-day. It will be the one chance of your people in the future as well. Can you make up your mind to face the loneliness and build your home under your own vine and fig tree? There you can look every man in the face, conscious that you're as good as he is and that the world is yours."

"I'se feared I ain't got de spunk, Marse Robert."

"The gold in your pocket will build you a house on public lands. You know how to farm. Africa has a great future. You've seen our life. We've taught you to work, to laugh, to play, to worship God, to love your home and your people. You're only twenty years old. I envy you the wealth of youth. I've reached the hilltop of life. Your way is still upward for a quarter of a century. It's the morning of life, boy, and a new world calls you. Will you hear it and go?"

"I'se skeered, Marse Robert," Sam persisted, shaking his head gravely.

Lee saw the hopelessness of his task and changed his point of appeal.

"What do you think of doing?"

"Who, me?"

"Who else? I can't think for you any longer."

"Oh, I'll be all right, sah. I foun' er lot er good colored friends in de bordin' house las' night. Wid dat five hundred dollars, I be livin' in clover here, sah, sho. I done talk wid a feller 'bout goin' in business."

"What line of business?"

"He gwine ter sho me ter-day, sah."

"You don't think you might change your mind about Liberia?"

"Na sah. I don't like my uncle dat's ober dar, nohow."

"Then I can't help you any more, Sam?"

"Na sah, Marse Robert. Y'u been de bes' master any nigger eber had in dis worl' an' I ain't nebber gwine ter fergit dat. When I feels dem five hundred dollars in my pocket I des swells up lak I gwine ter bust. I'se dat proud o' myse'f an' my ole marster dat gimme a start. Lordee, sah, hit's des gwine ter be fun fer me ter git long an' I mak' my fortune right here. Ye see ef I don't—"

Lee smiled indulgently.

"Watch out you don't lose the little one I gave you."

"Yassah, I got hit all sewed up in my close."

The old master saw that further argument would be useless. He rose wondering if his act of emancipation were not an act of cowardice—the shirking of responsibility for the boy's life. His mouth closed firmly. That was just the point about the institution of Slavery. No such responsibility should be placed on any man's shoulders.

Sam insisted on ministering to the wants of the family until he saw them safely on the boat for West Point. He waved each member a long goodbye. And then hurried to his new chum at the boarding house on Water Street. This dusky friend had won Sam's confidence by his genial ways on the first night of their acquaintance. He had learned that Sam had just been freed. That this was his first trip to New York though he spoke with careless ease of his knowledge of Washington.

But the most important fact revealed was that he had lately come into money through the generosity of his former master. The sable New Yorker evinced no curiosity about the amount.

After four days of joy he waked from a sickening stupor. He found himself lying in a filthy alley at dawn, bareheaded, his coat torn up the back, every dollar gone and his friend nowhere to be found.

Colonel Lee had given him the address of three clergymen and told him to call on them for help if he had any trouble. He looked everywhere for these cards. They couldn't be found. He had been so cocksure of himself he had lost them. He couldn't make up his mind to stoop to blacking boots and cleaning spittoons. He had always lived with aristocrats. He felt himself one to his finger tips.

There was but one thing he could do that seemed to be needed up here. He could handle tobacco. He could stem the leaf. He had learned that at Arlington in helping Ben superintend the curing of the weed for the servants' use.

He made the rounds of the factories only to find that the larger part of this work was done in tenement homes. He spent a day finding one of these workshops.

They offered to take him in as a boarder and give him sixty cents a day. He could have a pallet beside the six children in the other room and a place to put his trunk. Sixty cents a day would pay his room rent and give him barely enough food to keep body and soul together.

He hurried back to his boarding house, threw the little trunk on his back and trudged to the tobacco tenement. When he arrived no one stopped work. The mother waved her hand to the rear. He placed his trunk in a dark corner, came out and settled to the task of stemming tobacco.

He did his work with a skill and ease that fascinated the children. He took time to show them how to grip the leaf to best advantage and rip the stem with a quick movement that left scarcely a trace of the weed clinging to it. He worked with a swinging movement of his body and began to sing in soft, low tones.

The wizened eyes brightened, and when he stopped one of them whispered:

"More, black man. Sing some more!"

He sang one more song and choked. His eye caught the look of mortal weariness in the tired face of the little girl of six and his voice wouldn't work.

"Goddermighty!" he muttered, "dese here babies ought not ter be wukkin lak dis!"

When lunch time came the six children begged Sam to live in the place and take his meals with them.

Their mother joined in the plea and offered to board him for thirty cents a day. This would leave him a few cents to spend outside. He couldn't yet figure on clothes. It didn't seem right to have to pay for such things. Anyhow he had enough to last him awhile.

He decided to accept the offer and live as a boarder with the family. The lunch was discouraging. A piece of cold bread and a glass of water from the hydrant. Sam volunteered to bring the water.

The hydrant was the only water supply for the six hundred people whose houses touched the alley. It stood in the center. The only drainage was a sink in front of it. All the water used had to be carried up the stairs and the slops carried down. The tired people did little carrying downstairs. Pans and pails full of dishwater were emptied out the windows with no care for the passer below. Scarcely a day passed without a fight from this cause. A fight in the quarter was always a pleasure to the settlement.

Sam munched his bread and sipped his water. He watched the children eat their pieces ravenously. He couldn't finish his. He handed it to the smallest one of the children who was staring at him with eyes that chilled his heart. He knew the child was still hungry. Such a lunch as a piece of bread and a tin cup of water must be an accident, of course. He had heard of jailers putting prisoners on bread and water to punish them. He had never known human beings living at home to have such food. They would have a good dinner steaming hot. He was sure of that.

A sudden commotion broke out in the alley below. Yells, catcalls, oaths and the sound of crashing bricks, coal, pieces of furniture, and the splash of much water came from the court.

The mother rushed to the window and hurled a stone. There was a pile of them in the corner of the room.

Sam tried to look out.

"What's de matter, ma'm? Is dey er fight?"

"No—nothin' but a rent collector." The woman smiled.

It was the first pleasant thought that had entered her mind since Sam had come.

The dinner was as rude a surprise as the lunch. He watched the woman fumble over lighting the fire in the stove until he could stand it no longer.

"Lemme start de fire fer ye, ma'm," he offered at last.

"I wish you would," she sighed. "I married when I wuz seventeen and I never had made a fire before. I don't believe I'll ever learn."

The negro was not long in observing that she knew no more about cooking than she did about lighting a fire. The only cooking utensils in the place were a pot and a frying pan. The frying pan was in constant use. For dinner she fried a piece of tough beef without seasoning. She didn't know how to make bread. She bought the soggy stuff at the grocer's. There was no bread for dinner at all. They had boiled potatoes, boiled in plain water without even a grain of salt or pepper. The coffee was so black and heavy and bitter he couldn't drink it.

The father had a cup of beer with his coffee. A cup of beer was provided for Sam. The girl of twelve had rushed the growler to the corner saloon. The negro had never tasted beer before and he couldn't drink it. The stuff was horrible. It reminded him of a dose of quinine his mistress had once made him take when he had a chill.

He worked harder than usual next day to forget the fear that haunted him. At night he was ill. He had caught cold and had a fever. He dropped on his pallet without dinner and didn't get up for three weeks.

He owed his landlady so much money now, he felt in honor bound to board with her and give her all his earnings. He felt himself sinking into an abyss and he didn't have the strength to fight his way out.

The thing that hurt him more than bad food and air when he got to his work again was the look of death in the faces of the children. Their eyes haunted him in the dark as they slept on the same floor. He would get out of there when he was strong again. But these children would never go except to be hauled in the dead wagon to the Potter's Field. And he heard the rattle of this black wagon daily.

In a mood of desperation he walked down Water Street past the boarding house. In front of the place he met a boarder who had spoken to him the last day of his stay. He seized Sam by the coat, led him aside and whispered:

"Has ye heard 'bout de old man, name John Brown, dat come ter lead de niggers ter de promise' lan'?"

"No, but I'se waitin' fur somebody ter lead me."

"Come right on wid me, man. I'se a-goin' to a meetin' to-night an' jine de ban'. Will ye jine us?"

"I jine anything dat'll lead me to de promise' lan'."

"Come on. Hit's over in Brooklyn but a nigger's gwine ter meet me at de ferry and take me dar."

Sam felt in his pocket for the money for the ferry. Luckily he had twenty cents. It was worth while to gamble that much on a trip to the promised land.

An emissary of the prophet met them on the Brooklyn side and led them to a vacant store with closed wooden shutters. No light could be seen from the street. The guide rapped a signal and the door opened. Inside were about thirty negroes gathered before a platform. Chairs filled the long space. A white man was talking to the closely packed group of blacks. Sam pressed forward and watched him.

He was old until he began to talk. And then there was something strange and electric in his tones that made him young. His voice was vaulting and metallic and throbbed with an indomitable will. There was contagion in the fierceness of his tones. It caught his hearers and called them in a spell.

His shoulders were stooped. His manner grim and impressive. There was a quick, wiry movement to his body that gave the idea that he was crouching to spring. It was uncanny. It persisted as his speech lengthened.

He was talking in cold tones of the injustice being done the black man in the South. Of the crimes against God and humanity which the Southern whites were daily committing.

The one feature of the strange speaker that fascinated Sam was the glitter of his shifting eyes. He never held them still. He did not try to bore a man through with them. They were restless, as if moved by hidden forces within. The flash of light from their depths seemed a signal from an unknown world.

Sam watched him with open mouth.

He was finishing his talk now in a desultory way more gripping in its deadly calm than the most passionate appeal.

"We are enrolling volunteers," he quietly announced. "Volunteers in the United States League of Gileadites. If you sign your names to the roll to-night understand clearly what you are doing. I have written for each member Words of Advice which he must memorize as the guide to his action."

He drew a sheet of paper from his pocket and read:

"No jury can be found in the Northern States, that would convict a man for defending his rights to the last extremity. This is well understood by Southern Congressmen, who insist that the right of trial by jury should not be granted to the fugitive slave. Colored people have more fast friends among the whites than they suppose. Just think of the money expended by individuals in your behalf in the past twenty years! Think of the number who have been mobbed and imprisoned on your account. Have any of you seen the branded hand? Do you remember the names of Lovejoy and Torrey? Should any of your number be arrested, you must collect together as quickly as possible so as to outnumber your adversaries who are taking an active part against you. Let no able-bodied man appear on the ground unequipped or with his weapons exposed to view; let that be understood beforehand. Your plans must be known only to yourself, and with the understanding that all traitors must die, wherever caught and proven to be guilty.

"'Whosoever is fearful or afraid, let him return and depart early from Mount Gilead' (Judges VII Chapter, 3rd verse; Deuteronomy XX Chapter, 8th verse). Give all cowards an opportunity to show it on condition of holding their peace. Do not delay one moment after you're ready: you will lose all your resolution if you do. Let the first blow be the signal for all to engage; and when engaged do not do your work by halves; but make clean work with your enemies—"

It was the slow way in which he spoke the last words that gave them meaning. Sam could hear in his tones the crash of steel into human flesh and the grating of the blade on the bone. It made him shiver.

Every negro present joined the League.

When the last man had signed, John Brown led in a long prayer to Almighty God to bless the holy work on which these noble men had entered. At the close of his prayer he announced that on the following night at the People's Hall on the Bowery in New York, the Honorable Gerrit Smith, the noblest friend of the colored men in the North, would preside over a mass meeting in behalf of the downtrodden. He asked them all to come and bring their friends.

The ceremony of signing over, Sam turned to the guide with a genial smile.

"I done jine de League."

"That's right. I knew you would."

"I'se a full member now, ain't I?"

"Of course."

"When do we eat?" Sam asked eagerly.

"Eat?"

"Sho."

"We ain't organizin' de Gileadites to eat, man."

"Ain't we?"

"No, sah. We'se organizin'—ter kill white men dat come atter runaway slaves."

"But ain't dey got nuttin ter eat fer dem dat's here?"

"You come ter de big meetin' ter-morrow night an' hear sumfin dat's good fer yo' soul."

"I'll be dar," Sam promised. But he hoped to find something at the meeting that was good for his stomach as well as his soul.



CHAPTER XI

The negroes in New York and Brooklyn were not the only people in the North falling under the influence of the strange man who answered to the name of John Brown. There was something magnetic about him that drew all sorts and conditions of men.

The statesmen who still used reason as the guiding principle of life had no use for him. Henry Wilson, the new Senator from Massachusetts, met him and was repelled by the something that drew others. Governor Andrew was puzzled by his strange personality.

The secret of his power lay in a mystic appeal to the Puritan conscience. He had been from childhood afflicted with this conscience in its most malignant form. He knew instinctively its process of action.

The Puritan had settled New England and fixed the principles both of economic and political life. The civilization he set up was compact and commercial. He organized it in towns and townships. The Meeting House was the center, the source of all power and authority. No dwelling could be built further than two miles from a church and attendance on worship was made compulsory by law.

The South, against whose life Brown was organizing his militant crusade, was agricultural, scattered, individual. Individualism was a passion with the Southerner, liberty his battle cry. He scorned the "authority" of the church and worshipped God according to the dictates of his own conscience. The Court House, not the Meeting House, was his forum, and he rode there through miles of virgin forests to dispute with his neighbor.

The mental processes of the Puritan, therefore, were distinctly different from that of the Southerner. The Puritan mind was given to hours of grim repression which he called "Conviction of Sin." Resistance became the prime law of life. The world was a thing of evil. A morass of Sin to be attacked, to be reformed, to be "abolished." The Southerner perceived the evils of Slavery long before the Puritan, but he made a poor Abolitionist. The Puritan was born an Abolitionist. He should not only resist and attack the world; he should hate it. He early learned to love the pleasure of hating. He hated himself if no more promising victim loomed on the horizon. He early became the foremost Persecutor and Vice-Crusader of the new world. He made witch-hunting one of the sports of New England.

When not busy with some form of the witch hunt, the Puritan found an outlet for his repressed instincts in the ferocity with which he fought the Indians or worked to achieve the conquest of Nature and lay up worldly goods for himself and his children. Prosperity, therefore, became the second principle of his religion, next to vice crusading. When he succeeded in business, he praised God for his tender mercies. His goods and chattels became the visible evidence of His love. The only holiday he established or permitted was the day on which he publicly thanked God for the goods which He had delivered. Through him the New England Puritan Thanksgiving Day became a national festival and through him a religious reverence for worldly success has become a national ideal.

The inner life of the Puritan was soul-fear. Driven by fear and repression he attacked his rock-ribbed country, its thin soil, its savage enemies and his own fellow competitors with fury.

And he succeeded.

The odds against him sharpened his powers, made keen his mind, toughened his muscles.

The Southern planter, on the other hand, represented the sharpest contrast to this mental and physical attitude toward life. He came of the stock of the English Squire. And if he came from Scotland he found this English ideal already established and accepted it as his own.

The joy of living, not the horror of life, was the mainspring of his action and the secret of his character. The Puritan hated play. The Southerner loved to play. He dreamed of a life rich and full of spiritual and physical leisure. He enjoyed his religion. He did not agonize over it. His character was genial. He hated fear and drove it from his soul. He loved a fiddle and a banjo. He was brave. He was loyal to his friends. He loved his home and his kin. He despised trade. He disliked hard work.

To this hour in the country's life his ideal had dominated the nation.

The Puritan Abolitionists now challenged this ideal for a fight to the finish. Slavery was protected by the Constitution. All right, they burn the Constitution and denounce it as a Covenant with Death, an agreement with Hell. They begin a propaganda to incite servile insurrection in the South. They denounce the Southern Slave owner as a fiend. Even the greatest writers of the North caught the contagion of this mania. Longfellow, Lowell, Whittier and Emerson used their pens to blacken the name of the Southern people. From platform, pulpit and forum, through pamphlet, magazine, weekly and daily newspapers the stream of abuse poured forth in ever-increasing volume.

That the proud Southerner would resent the injustice of this wholesale indictment was inevitable. Their habit of mind, their born instinct of leadership, their love of independence, their hatred of dictation, their sense of historic achievement in the building of the republic would resent it. Their critics had not only been Slave holders themselves as long as it paid commercially, but their skippers were now sailing the seas in violation of Southern laws prohibiting the slave trade. Our early Slave traders were nearly all Puritans. When one of their ships came into port, the minister met her at the wharf, knelt in prayer and thanked Almighty God for one more cargo of heathen saved from hell.

Brown's whole plan of attack was based on the certainty of resentment from the South. He set out to provoke his opponents. This purpose was now the inspiration of every act of his life.

A group of six typical Northern minds had fallen completely under his power: Dr. Samuel G. Howe, Rev. Theodore Parker, Rev. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Frank B. Sanborn, George L. Stearns and the Rev. Hon. Gerrit Smith.

Gerrit Smith was many times a millionaire, one of the great land owners of the country, a former partner in business with John Jacob Astor, the elder, and at this time a philanthropist by profession. He had built a church at Peterboro, New York, and had preached a number of years. In his growing zeal as an Abolitionist he had entered politics and had just been elected to Congress from his district.

He was a man of gentle, humane impulses and looked out upon the world with the kindliest fatherly eyes. It was one of the curious freaks of fate that he should fall under the influence of Brown. The stern old Puritan was his antithesis in every line of face and mental make-up.

Smith was the preacher, the theorist, and the dreamer.

Brown had become the man of Action.

And by Action he meant exactly what the modern Social anarchist means by direct action. The plan he had developed was to come to "close quarters" with Slavery. He had organized the Band of Gileadites to kill every officer of the law who attempted to enforce the provisions of the Constitution of the United States relating to Slavery. His eyes were now fixed on the Territory of Kansas.

There could be no doubt about the abnormality of the mind of the man who had constituted himself the Chosen Instrument of Almighty God to destroy chattel Slavery in the South.

He was pacing the floor of the parlor of the New Astor House awaiting the arrival of his friend, Congressman Gerrit Smith, for a conference before the meeting scheduled for eight o'clock. It was a characteristic of Brown that he couldn't sit still. He paced the floor.

The way he walked marked him with distinction, if not eccentricity. He walked always with a quick, springing step. He didn't swing his foot. It worked on springs. And the spring in it had a furtive action not unlike the movement of a leopard. His muscles, in spite of his fifty-four years, were strong and sinewy. He was five feet ten inches in height.

His head was remarkable for its small size. The brain space was limited and the hair grew low on his forehead, as if a hark back to the primitive man out of which humanity grew. His chin protruded into an aggressive threat. His mouth was not only stern, it was as inexorable as an oath.

His hair was turning gray and he wore it trimmed close to his small skull. His nose was an aggressive Roman type. The expression of his face was shrewd and serious, with a touch always of cunning.

A visitor at his house at North Elba whispered one day to one of his sons:

"Your father looks like an eagle."

The boy hesitated and replied in deep seriousness:

"Yes, or some other carnivorous bird."

The thing above all others that gave him the look of a bird of prey was his bluish-gray eye. An eye that was never still and always shone with a glitter. The only time this strange light was not noticeable was during the moments when he drew the lids down half-way. He was in the habit of holding his eyes half shut in times of deep thinking. At these moments if he raised his head, his eyes glowed two pin points of light.

No matter what the impression he made, either of attraction or repulsion, his personality was a serious proposition. No man looked once only. And no man ever attempted undue familiarity or ridicule. His life to this time had been a series of tragic failures in everything he had undertaken. A study of his intense Puritan face revealed at once his fundamental character. A soul at war with the world. A soul at war with himself. He was the incarnation of repressed emotions and desires. He had married twice and his fierce passions had made him the father of twenty children before fifty years of age. His first wife had given birth to seven in ten years and died a raving maniac during the birth of her last. Two of his children had already shown the signs of unbalanced mentality.

The grip of his mind on the individuals who allowed themselves to be drawn within the circle of his influence became absolute.

He was a man of earnest and constant prayer to his God. The God he worshipped was one whose face was not yet revealed to the crowd that hung on his strangely halting words. He spoke in mystic symbols. His mysticism was always the source of his power over the religious leaders who had gathered about him. They had not stopped to analyze the meaning of this appeal. They looked once into his shining blue-gray eyes and became his followers. He never stopped to reason.

He spoke with authority.

He claimed a divine commission for action and they did not pause to examine his credentials. He had failed at every enterprise he had undertaken. And then he suddenly discovered his power over the Puritan imagination.

To Brown's mind, from the day of his devotion to the fixed idea of destroying Slavery in the South, "Action" had but one meaning—bloodshed. He knew that revolutionary ideas are matters of belief. He asserted beliefs. The elect believed. The damned refused to believe.

Long before Smith had entered the room Brown had dropped into a seat by the window, his eyes two pin points. His abstraction was so deep, his absorption in his dreams so complete that when Smith spoke, he leaped to his feet and put himself in an attitude of defense.

He gazed at his friend a moment and rubbed his eyes in a dazed way before he could come back to earth.

In a moment he had clasped hands with the philanthropist. Smith looked into his eyes and his will was one with the man of Action. He had not yet grasped the full meaning of the Action. He was to awake later to its tremendous import—primitive, barbaric, animal, linking man through hundreds of thousands of years to the beast who was his jungle father.

Smith did not know that he was to preside at the meeting until Brown told him. He consented without a moment's hesitation.



CHAPTER XII

On their way to the hall on the Bowery Gerrit Smith and John Brown passed through dimly lighted streets along which were drifting scores of boys and girls, ragged, friendless, homeless, shelterless in the chill night. The strange old man's eyes were fixed on space. He saw nothing, heard nothing of the city's roaring life or the call of its fathomless misery.

He saw nothing even when they passed a house with a red light before which little girls of twelve were selling flowers. Neither of the men, living for a single fixed idea, caught the accent of evil in the child's voice as she stepped squarely in front of them and said:

"What's ye hurry?"

When they turned aside she piped again:

"Won't ye come in?"

They merely passed on. The infinite pathos of the scene had made no impression. That this child's presence on the streets was enough to damn the whole system of society to the lowest hell never dawned on the philanthropist or the man of Action.

The crowd in the hall was not large. The place was about half full and it seated barely five hundred. The masses of the North as yet took no stock in the Abolition Crusade.

They felt the terrific pressure of the problem of life at home too keenly to go into hysterics over the evils of Negro Slavery in the South. William Lloyd Garrison had been preaching his denunciations for twenty-one years and its fruits were small. The masses of the people were indifferent.

But a man was pushing his way to the platform of the little hall to-night who was destined to do a deed that would accomplish what all the books and all the magazines and all the newspapers of the Crusaders had tried in vain to do.

Small as the crowd was, there was something sinister in its composition. Half of them were foreigners. It was the first wave of the flood of degradation for our racial stock in the North—the racial stock of John Adams and John Hancock.

A few workingmen were scattered among them. Fifty or sixty negroes occupied the front rows. Sam had secured a seat on the aisle. Gerrit Smith rose without ceremony and introduced Brown. There were no women present. He used the formal address to the American voter:

"Fellow Citizens:

"I have the honor to present to you to-night a man chosen of God to lead our people out of the darkness of sin, my fellow worker in the Kingdom, the friend of the downtrodden and the oppressed, John Brown."

Faint applause greeted the old man as he moved briskly to the little table with his quick, springing step.

He fixed the people with his brilliant eyes and they were silent. He was slow of speech, awkward in gesture, and without skill in the building of ideas to hold the imagination of the typical crowd.

It was not a typical crowd of American freemen. It was something new under the sun in our history. It was the beginning of the coming mob mind destined to use Direct Action in defiance of the Laws on which the Republic had been built.

There was no mistaking the message Brown bore. He proclaimed that the negro is the blood brother of the white man. The color of his skin was an accident. This white man with a black skin was now being beaten and ground into the dust by the infamy of his masters. Their crimes cried to God for vengeance. All the negro needed was freedom to transform him into a white man—your equal and mine. At present, our brothers and sisters are groaning in chains on Southern plantations. His vaulting metallic tones throbbed with a strange, cold passion as he called for Action.

The vibrant call for bloodshed in this cry melted the crowd into a new personality. The mildest spirit among them was merged into the mob mind of the speaker. And every man within the sound of his voice was a murderer.

The final leap of the speaker's soul into an expression of supreme hate for the Southern white man found its instant echo in the mob which he had created. They demanded no facts. They asked no reasons. They accepted his statements as the oracle of God. They were opinions, beliefs, dogmas, the cries of propaganda only—precisely the food needed for developing the mob mind to its full strength. Envy, jealousy, hatred ruled supreme. Liberty was a catchword. Blood lust was the motive power driving each heart beat.

Brown suddenly stopped. His speech had reached no climax. It had rambled into repetition. Its power consisted in the repetition of a fixed thought. He knew the power of this repeated hammering on the mind. An idea can be repeated until it is believed, true or false. He had pounded his message into his hearers until they were incapable of resistance. It was unnecessary for him to continue. He stopped so suddenly, they waited in silence for him to go on after he had taken his seat.

A faint applause again swept the front of the house. There was something uncanny about the man that hushed applause. They knew that he was indifferent to it. Hidden fires burned within him that lighted the way of life. He needed no torches held on high. He asked no honors. He expected no applause and he got little. What he did demand was submission to his will and obedience as followers.

Gerrit Smith rose with this thought gripping his gentle spirit. His words came automatically as if driven by another's mind.

"Our friend and leader has dedicated his life to the service of suffering humanity. It is our duty to follow. The first step is to sacrifice our money in his cause."

The ushers passed the baskets and Sam's heart warmed as he heard the coin rattle. His eyes bulged when he saw that one of them had a pile of bills in it that covered the coin. He heard the great and good man say that it was for the poor brother in black. He saw visions of a warm room, of clean food and plenty of it.

He was glad he'd come, although he didn't like the look in John Brown's eyes while he spoke. Their fierce light seemed to bore through him and hurt. Now that he was seated and his eyes half closed, uplifted toward the ceiling, he wasn't so formidable. He rather liked him sitting down.

The ushers poured the money on the table and counted it. Sam had not seen so much money together since he piled his five hundred dollars in gold in a stack and looked at it. He watched the count with fascination. There must be a thousand at least.

He was shocked when the head usher leaned over the edge of the platform, and whispered to Smith the total.

"Eighty-five dollars."

Sam glanced sadly at the two rows of negroes in front. There wouldn't be much for each. He took courage in the thought, however, that some of them were well-to-do and wouldn't ask their share. He was sure of this because he had seen three or four put something in the baskets.

Gerrit Smith announced the amount of the collection with some embarrassment and heartily added:

"My check for a hundred and fifteen dollars makes the sum an even two hundred."

That was something worth while. Smith and Brown held a conference about the announcement of another meeting as Sam whispered to the head usher:

"Could ye des gimme mine now an' lemme go?"

"Yours?"

"Yassah."

"Your share of the collection?"

The usher eyed him in scorn.

"To be sho," Sam answered confidently. "Yer tuk it up fer de po' black man. I'se black, an' God knows I'se po'."

"You're a poor fool!"

"What ye take hit up fer den?"

"To support John Brown, not to feed lazy, good-for-nothing, free negroes."

Sam turned from the man in disgust. He was about to rise and shamble back to his miserable pallet when a sudden craning of necks and moving of feet drew his eye toward the door.

He saw a man stalking down the aisle. He carried on his left arm a little bundle of filthy rags. He mounted the platform and spoke to the Chairman:

"Mr. Smith, may I say just a word to this meeting?"

The Philanthropist Congressman recognized him instantly as the most eloquent orator in the labor movement in America. He had met him at a Reform Convention. He rose at once.

"Certainly."

"Fellow Citizens, Mr. George Evans, the leading advocate of Organized Labor in America, wishes to speak to you. Will you hear him?"

"Yes! Yes! Yes!" came from all parts of the house.

The man began in quivering tones that held Sam and gripped the unwilling mind of the crowd:

"My friends: Just a few words. I have in my arms the still breathing skeleton of a little girl. I found her in a street behind this building within the sound of the voice of your speaker."

He paused and waved to John Brown.

"She was fighting with a stray cat for a crust of bread in a garbage pail. I hold her on high."

With both hands he lifted the dazed thing above his head.

"Look at her. This bundle of rags God made in the form of a woman to be the mother of the race. She has been thrown into your streets to starve. Her father is a workingman whom I know. For six months, out of work, he fought with death and hell, and hell won. He is now in prison. Her mother, unable to support herself and child, sought oblivion in drink. She's in the gutter to-night. Her brother has joined a gang on the East Side. Her sister is a girl of the streets.

"You talk to me of Negro Slavery in the South? Behold the child of the White Wage Slave of the North! Why are you crying over the poor negro? In the South the master owns the slave. Here the master owns the job. Down there the master feeds, clothes and houses his man with care. Black children laugh and play. Here the master who owns the job buys labor in the open market. He can get it from a man for 75 cents a day. From a woman for 30 cents a day. When he has bought the last ounce of strength they can give, the master of the wage slave kicks him out to freeze or starve or sink into crime.

"You tell me of the white master's lust down South? I tell you of the white master's lust for the daughters of our own race.

"I see a foreman of a factory sitting in this crowd. I've known him for ten years. I've talked with a score of his victims. He has the power to employ or discharge girls of all ages ranging from twelve to twenty-five. Do you think a girl can pass his bead eyes and not pay for the job the price he sees fit to demand?

"If you think so, you don't know the man. I do!"

He paused and the stillness of death followed. Necks were craned to find the figure of the foreman crouching in the crowd. The speaker was not after the individual. His soul was aflame with the cause of millions.

"I see also a man in the crowd who owns a row of tenements so filthy, so dark, so reeking with disease that no Southern master would allow a beast to live in them. This hypocrite has given to John Brown to-night a contribution of money for the downtrodden black man. He coined this money out of the blood of white men and women who pay the rent for the dirty holes in which they die."

A moment of silence that was pain as he paused and a hundred eyes swept the room in search of the man. Again the speaker stood without a sign. He merely paused to let his message sink in the hearts of his hearers.

"My eyes have found another man in this crowd who is an employer of wage slaves. He is here to denounce Chattel Slavery in the South as the sum of all villainies while he practices a system of wage slavery more cruel without a thought morally wrong.

"I say this in justice to the man because I know him. He hasn't intelligence enough to realize what he is doing. If he had he would begin by abolishing slavery in his own household. This reformer isn't a bad man at heart. He is simply an honest fool. These same fools in England have given millions to abolish black slavery in the Colonies and leave their own slaves in the Spittalfield slums to breed a race of paupers and criminals. Why don't a Buxton or a Wilberforce complain of the White Slavery at home? Because it is indispensable to their civilization. They lose nothing in freeing negroes in distant Colonies. They would lose their fortunes if they dared free their own white brethren.

"The master of the wage slave employs his victim only when he needs him. The Southern master supports his man whether he needs him or not. And cares for him when ill. The Abolitionist proposes to free the black slave from the whip. Noble work. But to what end if he deprives him of food? He escapes the lash and lands in a felon's cell or climbs the steps of a gallows.

"Your inspired leader, the speaker of this evening, has found his most enthusiastic support in New England.

"No doubt.

"In Lowell, Massachusetts, able-bodied men in the cotton mills are receiving 80 cents a day for ten hours' work. Women are receiving 32 cents a day for the same. At no period of the history of this republic has it been possible for a human being to live in a city and reproduce his kind on such wages. What is the result? The racial stock that made the Commonwealth of Massachusetts a civilized state is perishing. It is being replaced from the slums of Europe. The standard of life is dragged lower with each generation.

"The negro, you tell me, must work for others or be flogged. The poor white man at your door must work for others or be starved. The negro is subject to a single master. He learns to know him, if not to like him. There is something human in the touch of their lives. The poor white man here is the slave of many masters. The negro may lead the life of a farm horse. Your wage slave is a horse that hasn't even a stable. He roams the street in the snows of winter. He is ridden by anybody who wishes a ride. He is cared for by nobody. Our rich will do anything for the poor except to get off their backs. The negro has a master in sickness and health. The wage slave is honored with the privilege of slavery only so long as he can work ten hours a day. He is a pauper when he can toil no more.

"Your Abolitionist has fixed his eye on Chattel Slavery in the South. It involves but three million five-hundred thousand negroes. The system of wage slavery involves the lives of twenty-five million white men and women.

"Slavery was not abolished in the North on moral grounds, but because, as a system of labor it was old-fashioned, sentimental, extravagant, inefficient. It was abolished by the masters of men, not by the men.

"The North abolished slavery for economy in production. There was no sentiment in it. Wage slavery has proven itself ten times more cruel, more merciless, more efficient. The Captain of Industry has seen the vision of an empire of wealth beyond the dreams of avarice. He has seen that the master who cares for the aged, the infirm, the sick, the lame, the halt is a fool who must lag behind in the march of the Juggernaut. Only a fool stops to build a shelter for his slave when he can kick him out in the cold and find hundreds of fresh men to take his place.

"Two years ago the Chief of Police of the City of New York took the census of the poor who were compelled to live in cellars. He found that eighteen thousand five hundred and eighty-six white wage slaves lived in these pest holes under the earth. One-thirteenth of the population of the city lives thus underground to-day. Hundreds of these cellars are near the river. They are not waterproof. Their floors are mud. When the tides rise the water floods these noisome holes. The bedding and furniture float. Fierce wharf rats, rising from their dens, dispute with men, women and children the right to the shelves above the water line.

"There are cellars devoted entirely to lodging where working men and women can find a bed of straw for two cents a night—the bare dirt for one cent. Black and white men, women and children, are mixed in one dirty mass. These rooms are without light, without air, filled with the damp vapors of mildewed wood and clothing. They swarm with every species of vermin that infest the animal and human body. The scenes of depravity that nightly occur in these lairs of beasts are beyond words.

"These are the homes provided by the master who has established 'Free' Labor as the economic weapon with which he has set out to conquer the world.

"And he is conquering with it. The superior, merciless power of this system as an economic weapon is bound to do in America what it has done throughout the world. The days of Chattel Slavery are numbered. The Abolitionist is wasting his breath, or worse. He is raising a feud that may drench this nation in blood in a senseless war over an issue that is settled before it's raised.

"Long ago the economist discovered that there was no vice under the system of Chattel Slavery that could not be more freely gratified under the new system of wage slavery.

"You weep because the negro slave must serve one master. He has no power to choose a new one. Do not forget that the power to choose a new master carries with it power to discharge the wage slave and hire a new one. This power to discharge is the most merciless and cruel tyranny ever developed in the struggle of man from savagery to civilization. This awful right places in the hand of the master the power of life and death. He can deprive his wage slave of fuel, food, clothes, shelter. Life is the only right worth having if its exercise is put into question. A starving man has no liberty. The word can have no meaning. He must live first or he cannot be a man.