House Divided

by Ben Ames Williams

  “Nonsense!” Cinda protested; but he shook his head.

  “Not at all,” he assured her. “Studying such things is one of the ways I spend my days at Belle Vue. Many of the fine Virginia families of today were founded by a grandfather or a great-grandfather like ours, by men who became big land owners simply through a superior ability to meet and master wilderness conditions. We like to think of ourselves as cavaliers, but there were mighty few aristocrats among the early settlers, even in Virginia. After all, the dandy who shone at court in London wouldn’t choose to come out here and starve and freeze in a log cabin; and if he did come, unless he went to work and worked harder than his neighbors, he soon found himself left behind by the procession.”

  Enid watched Faunt and thought how wonderful he was. He went on: “Outside of a few families, most of the best-known Virginia names don’t go back very far beyond the Revolution. The aristocrats of colonial days were usually Tories, so when the King’s troops were expelled, they went along. Our grandfathers who stayed behind had to pull themselves up out of the ruck by their own boot straps.”

  “Well, I simply don’t believe it,” Cinda declared. “There’s everything in having a fine inheritance. Why, Faunt, you wouldn’t ride a horse that wasn’t well bred!”

  Faunt smiled, and Enid loved his smile, loved the way he now and then caught her eye as though to assure her she had a part in this conversation. “I value the sort of grandfathers most of us Virginians really had,” he remarked. “They were men who knew how to work and win their way. I value them above the sort of grandfathers most of us like to think we had.”

  Redford Streean took the Lincoln biography from Tony’s hands, leafing through the pages; and Brett Dewain said reasonably:

  “You’re overlooking the intangibles, Faunt, aren’t you? Pride in our ancestry is often a source of virtue in us. We behave ourselves because we feel that to do so is expected of us, that courtesy and a sense of honor and an acceptance of responsibility are the traditions of our families. You’d better not take that away from us. A lot of us—if we were ever convinced that our grandfathers had been rascals—might readily enough turn to rascally ways ourselves.”

  “Yes,” Faunt assented, and he smiled. “Yes, it’s probably good for us to believe that Grandfather Currain, and presumably all the Courdains before him, were high-minded gentlemen!”

  “Exactly!” Cinda agreed. “Because we think we’re fine people, we try to behave in fine ways.”

  Streean looked up from the book. “Speaking of Virginia grandfathers,” he said, “Lincoln had one, too. His grandfather migrated from Virginia to Kentucky and the Indians shot him.”

  “Too bad they didn’t shoot him sooner!” Cinda’s dry comment amused them all.

  “His father’s name was Tom Lincoln,” Streean told them. “Tom married a girl named Lucy Hanks.” 1 Enid was struck by the familiar name. Her own daughter’s name was Lucy, and so was Mrs. Currain’s; and Enid remembered that there had been another Lucy whom Mr. Currain loved long ago, and she fell to wondering about that other Lucy. If Mr. Currain had married her, instead of letting her father take her off to Kentucky, then he would never have married Mrs. Currain; and these children of his here talking together would never have been born at all. She thought maliciously that if Tony and Tilda had never been born, no one would miss them; nor Trav, if it came to that. Cinda was rather nice, though Enid was sometimes a little afraid of her, but of them all, Faunt was the only one who would be any real loss. It was a delight just to watch him move, to see the way his head turned toward anyone who spoke, to hear his quiet voice, to see how respectfully they all attended when he said anything.

  When she began to listen again, Streean was speaking. “Abe’s father was a squatter, never stayed long in one place. He went from Kentucky to Indiana.” He laughed at something on the page under his eye. “It says here that he wasn’t much good as a hunter, never even learned to shoot. Then his father moved on to Illinois, and Abe began to split rails.”

  Faunt said in regretful tones: “Brett, the best men in the South have always gone into politics; but if the Government is to fall into the hands of such riffraff as this, the halls of Congress will no longer be tolerable for gentlemen.” Why couldn’t Trav be like Faunt, instead of sitting stupidly half-asleep, with never a word to say? Faunt added almost sadly: “And a nation dominated by such uneducated, graceless bumpkins can never command Virginia’s loyalty.”

  “Yet Virginia will go a long way to avoid disunion,” Brett predicted. Then Streean chuckled at something he read and said in amused derision:

  “Here, this is worth hearing. It seems there were some bullies in his neighborhood called the Clary’s Grove boys, and Lincoln got into a wrestling match with one of them, and was winning, but the other fellow’s friends pitched in, so Lincoln gave up, said he couldn’t fight them all. Now here’s the funny part!” He read: “‘This gave him a reputation for courage——’”

  “Courage?” Cinda cried. “To quit just because the odds were against him! Is that what the North calls courage?”

  Tony took the book from Streean. “Let me find you some of the things he’s said in his speeches about slavery,” he suggested. “Here.” He read: “‘I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republic of its just influence in the world, and enables our enemies to taunt us as hypocrites, causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity, forces so many really good men among ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty.’”

  There was a moment’s thoughtful silence. Then Faunt commented: “Well, there’s some truth in that. Our having slaves has lost us a lot of friends. And we all know slavery’s wrong.”

  Streean took issue with him. “It’s right economically, Faunt.”

  Trav, surprising them all, argued the point. “I don’t believe so, Mister Streean,” he declared. Enid realized that none of them ever addressed Streean less formally than this. Trav went on, faintly uneasy at having entered the discussion, yet standing to his guns: “When they had that fight in Congress last winter over the speakership, because Mr. Sherman and a lot of other Republicans had endorsed Helper’s book, I sent to New York for a copy and read it. It’s full of statistics. You know I like figures. Of course the book is silly, violent, and—well, silly; but the figures are hard to get around.” He hesitated, then went steadily on: “With free labor in the North and slave labor in the South, the North has gone ahead a lot faster than we have. We send North for just about everything we buy: clothes, furniture, carriages, books. And even in farming, the North is way ahead of us. They grow more per acre than we do, a third more wheat, almost twice as many bushels of oats, twice as much rye, half again as much corn. The North’s hay crop is worth more than all our cotton and tobacco and rice and hemp and hay put together. Their crops are worth more and their land is worth more. No, Mister Streean, slavery isn’t economically sound.” He added, embarrassed at his own loquacity: “Slavery may be a good thing in other ways—I don’t know; but I do know it’s not a good thing for the farmer.”

  Streean said angrily: “White men can’t work in the heat, Trav. They can’t stand the sun in the cotton fields; they get malaria, yellow fever, all sorts of diseases.”

  Trav shook his head. “You’re mistaken, Mister Streean. I know not only white men but white women who work in the fields. I know some women who even hire out to do field work; and thousands of white men, brought down from the North, work on railroad building and construction and stand the heat better than negroes do.”

  Enid thought Trav was simply exasperating. “I suppose you’d like to see ladies picking cotton,” she said sharply; and there was a moment’s silence, Trav not replying. Then Faunt said:

  “No, Mister Streean, it’s not easy to defend slavery. Colonel Lee has emancipated his slaves. I’ve considered doing the same. If the whole South did it, we’d stand on firmer moral ground.”
/>   “Throw a billion dollars’ worth of property away?” Streean spoke in angry challenge.

  Trav said earnestly: “You’d enrich the South if you did. Not the planters, of course; but the whole South, yes.” He hesitated. “Well, I’m getting into figures again,” he said apologetically. “But you know mighty few of us own slaves. Only about twenty-five hundred men in the South have over a hundred slaves apiece. You’re one of them, Brett, at the Plains; and we have about a hundred and thirty at Great Oak. But only about a third of the families in the South have any slaves at all.”

  “They’re the families that matter!” Cinda protested.

  “Well, we think so,” Trav assented. “We think of ourselves as the South, but we’re not. There aren’t many of us. There aren’t as many of us as there are of the kind of people we call white trash. And in between us and the white trash are people like the men who live around Chimneys, poor as dirt, owning no slaves, working hard, but with mighty little chance to get along.” He flushed awkwardly. “And it’s we slave owners who keep them so. They can’t compete with us. If it weren’t for the slaves, every white man in the South who doesn’t own any negroes would be better off—and there are lots more of them than there are of us.”

  Enid thought Trav was ridiculous, till Faunt agreed with him. “We exaggerate our own importance. Maybe the real strength of the South lies in the ordinary little people. Individually, they’re not much, but there are so many more of them than there are of us.”

  “Perhaps that’s the trouble, Faunt,” Brett suggested. “There are so many of them they’ll take charge and run things if we’re not careful. That’s the chief reason I mistrust Mr. Lincoln. He wants to let them.”

  “I know,” Faunt agreed. “And of course he’s wrong. Ordinary men aren’t qualified to decide great questions.”

  Cinda said sharply: “Well, the politicians haven’t been able to decide about slavery, and they’ve been arguing about it ever since I was a child! Ordinary men couldn’t make any worse mess of things.”

  Streean spoke to Trav, returning to their difference. “If you think slaves are a losing proposition, why don’t you sell them South?” His tone was almost a jeer. “There’s a good market for them there.”

  Trav did not reply, but Faunt did. “We don’t sell our people, Mister Streean.”

  Streean laughed. “Why not? Slaves are no different from any other cattle.”

  Faunt said mildly: “We don’t feel so, Mister Streean. We don’t even think of them as slaves. They’re our people.”

  Enid recognized the rebuke and Streean may have felt it, too, for he retorted: “Names aren’t things! Whatever you call them, they’re still slaves.” He spoke with a dry rancor. “If you want to quibble, there’s mighty little legal difference between a black slave and a white married woman. She and her husband are one person—and he’s the person! She can’t own property, or bequeath it, without her husband’s formal consent; she can’t sue or be sued. If her husband whips her she can’t testify against him unless he causes her permanent injury! You call them wives, and you call slaves people, but words don’t change facts!”

  Enid felt cold anger in them all, and Cinda said in a dry tone: “Well, Tilda, you’ll have to be careful not to annoy that husband of yours, or he’ll take a cowhide to you.” She looked at Brett. “I’m glad you aren’t a lawyer, Brett Dewain.”

  Brett smiled, spoke to Streean. “From the business point of view, I agree with you,” he said generously. “We can’t afford to free our slaves. Taking Great Oak and Belle Vue and Chimneys and the Plains, I suppose the Currain family has half a million dollars or more in—human assets. So abolition would be our ruin.”

  Streean nodded. “Of course. Even Abe Lincoln, the greatest fool alive, is willing to leave slavery where it is!”

  Faunt said, after a moment: “I’ve done a lot of thinking, these last two weeks. We have to try to see things straight. What’s happened, it seems to me, is that the frontier has seized political power, North and South. The Gulf States, the Cotton States, are in the saddle here, just as western backwoodsmen like this Lincoln have come to the top in the North. If there is trouble coming, it’s because Northerners have been taught to believe they’re better than we are, and because we’ve been taught to believe we’re better than they are; and on both sides we’re ready to fight to prove it.”

  His quiet words left them briefly silent. Tony turned the leaves of the book in his hand. “This fellow Lincoln’s ready to fight too, you know,” he said at last. “Here’s something he said once, talking to us.” He read: “‘Man for man, you are not better than we are, and there are not so many of you as there are of us. If we were fewer in numbers than you, I think that you would whip us; if we were equal, it would likely be a drawn battle; but being inferior in numbers, you will make nothing by attempting to master us.’ ”

  After a moment Brett said quietly: “He’s right, of course. Twenty million or so on their side; say six million on ours. No, if it comes to fighting, we’ll be beaten.”

  Cinda urged: “But, Brett, it isn’t just mathematics. You’re as bad as Trav about figures. We can whip the North! They’re all cowards. All they know is making money.”

  Brett said reasonably: “Well, even making money is largely an intelligent balancing of risks. They can beat us. That’s a fact. No escaping it.” And after a moment he added: “Unless we can defeat Lincoln.” His voice hardened. “He’s a nobody, the hedge-bred son of a squatter and of a woman nobody knows. To nominate such a man for President would be ridiculous if it weren’t so damnable! He must be beaten!”

  Tony said even the Republicans in Washington were doubtful of success. “And the Democrats think the Northwest will go against him.”

  Brett doubted this. “My correspondents in New York don’t like Lincoln, but they say he’ll carry the Northwest. That region holds a grudge against the South that goes back to Calhoun. He promised to improve navigation on the Mississippi if they’d help admit Texas to the Union, and they did help; but then Mr. Calhoun compromised on the Oregon question, and when President Polk vetoed the Great Lakes navigation bill Southern Congressmen helped sustain the veto. The Northwest thinks the South betrayed them.”

  Streean said cheerfully: “Well, we’ll lick Old Abe if we can, Brett; but even if we don’t, we’ll hold control of Congress. Without Congress there’s nothing he can do.”

  “Unless—if he’s elected—the Gulf States secede,” Brett reminded him. “If they do, their representatives in Congress will have to resign, and there goes our control.”

  Cinda rose rebelliously. “We’re talking ourselves into a panic. I’m sick of it.” She moved toward the door. Tilda like a shadow followed her, and Enid rose to go with them. As she reached the door, Faunt and Trav spoke both at once, and Faunt yielded.

  “Sorry, Trav. Go on.”

  So in the hall outside the door Enid, wishing Trav had held his tongue, waited to hear what Faunt had been about to say. Trav, always interested in any point that involved mathematics, explained: “Why, I was just going to say that it’s our slaves who give us our strength in Washington. They’re counted as population, three-fifths of them. We only have about a third as many voters as the North, but figuring the negroes that way, it’s just the same as if every Southerner voted twice. So we’ve always been strong in Congress. Eleven out of fifteen Presidents have been Southerners.”

  Tony remarked: “Lincoln says the same thing in one of his speeches. He claims that because slaves don’t vote, they shouldn’t be counted.”

  Faunt spoke again, in those deep strong tones that Enid had waited to hear. “We had a fight over that same question here in Virginia, in the Constitutional Convention ten years ago.”

  “Not on counting the slaves,” Brett objected.

  “It amounted to that. Western Virginia wanted representation on the basis of suffrage; and the Piedmont and the Tidewater wanted to base it not only on the number of voters but also on wealth, on t
axes paid. Governor Wise was the only prominent eastern man who favored the suffrage basis. We in eastern Virginia called him a ‘modern Jack Cade’; but probably his stand elected him governor.”

  Tony commented: “Lincoln will try to make us let the negroes vote—if he’s elected.”

  Faunt said gravely: “I can’t believe even he would want that.”

  But Tony stuck to his guns. “You read this book and you’ll realize how dangerous he is. He’s a nigger-lover, Faunt. He talks about black women in ‘forced concubinage with their masters,’ says they ‘become mothers of mulattoes in spite of themselves.’” Enid realized that they did not know she was eavesdropping, and she started to move away, but she heard Tony’s casual laugh. “I never had to force a wench. They’re so willing they get to be nuisances. I used to send them off from Great Oak to Chimneys, Trav, so Mama wouldn’t see too many mulatto babies around and start asking questions.”

  On his words a heavy silence fell, and Enid heard someone rise, and she turned to slip away and saw Cinda just descending the stairs. Enid’s cheeks burned hot, and she tried to pass, to escape, and Cinda asked sharply:

  “Whatever were you doing?”

  Enid was so startled that she told the truth. “Listening to something, Faunt——” Then in dismay at her own words she pushed past Cinda and darted upward. From the landing she looked back and saw Cinda watching her with puzzled and uneasy eyes. She closed her door almost in panic, stood with her back against it, her breast rising and falling rapidly. Why had she said that? How much of betrayal was there in her tones?

  But then her panic turned to defensive anger. Why should Cinda look at her like that? Hadn’t she a right to like Faunt and to admire him if she wanted to? Everyone else liked and admired him; then so would she! Next morning when she and Trav, and Tony who would spend a dutiful day or two with his mother, were ready to depart for Great Oak, she urged Faunt to come with them. She felt Cinda’s eyes upon her, and defiantly persisted. Why shouldn’t she invite Faunt to Great Oak? Wasn’t he Trav’s brother? Wasn’t Great Oak her home? Let Cinda be horrid if she chose!