Up From Freedom

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by Wayne Grady


  “And not only morality, Your Honor,” Fritts continued. “Science, too, warns us against the dangers inherent in the mixing of the black and white races. Indeed, most modern scientists agree that when we speak of the black race and the white race, we are in fact speaking about two separate and distinct species of beings, two separate acts of Creation, as different the one from the other as any two species of animals can be, as different, let us say, as is the donkey from the Arabian, or the hyena from the greyhound. Archeology and geology have determined that this separation of the species has persisted since Egyptian times. Negroes and Caucasians could not possibly have descended from the same parents. Negroes, it is now well known, are not descended from Adam and Eve, but are the products of an earlier, and inferior, Creation.”

  Fritts paused and walked to his table, where he took a drink of water, then picked up a sheet of printed paper and read from it: “According to Edward Long’s History of Jamaica, published in 1774, and I quote, ‘blacks are lower than the animals; in their natural state, they live in ignorance, idleness and depravity.’ He adds that ‘there is no other conclusion to be drawn but that the Negro belongs to a different species than our own.’

  “A different species, Your Honor. In what ways do they differ from us, apart from the obvious distinction of color, which is as the cockerel differs from the crow? The anthropologist Charles White, in his Account of the Regular Gradation in Man, finds, after careful measurement of hundreds of human and humanlike skulls from around the world, that the negro skull has a narrower frontal lobe and is smaller in volume than the skulls of Europeans and even of Indians. Indians, whom we have eradicated from our midst, have bigger brains than negroes. The author also found that whereas whites perspire freely in hot climates, negroes do not. Neither do dogs. Or monkeys. Black women are less troubled by menstruation than are white women, he adds, and again my apologies to the ladies present, and black women give birth without pain, ‘like animals,’ he writes.”

  Moody felt Tamsey’s shoulder trembling and leaned closer. “Fritts is only doing his lawyerly duty,” he whispered to her. “He’s just speechifying.”

  “Is that what you think?” she asked. “That I a kind of animal, that I feel nothing when you touch me? All this time?”

  “Don’t,” he said. “Of course I don’t.”

  “Then what?”

  But Fritts had started again, and they turned to face the onslaught head-on.

  “No less a personage than the great Swiss scientist Louis Agassiz, one of the foremost authorities in America on the subject of the origins and races of mankind, believes that the black race was created by God separately from the Caucasian race, that it was, as it were, a kind of rehearsal for the real thing. Mr. Agassiz said in a speech delivered just two years ago, in Charleston, Virginia, that, and I quote: ‘Viewed zoologically’ —that is, Your Honor, viewed from the point of view of the science of—”

  “I am familiar with several words of more than one syllable, Mr. Fritts,” said Judge Amery dryly, “and ‘zoologically’ is one of them. Tendentiousness is another. Pray get on with it and try to remember that there is no jury present.”

  “Yes, Your Honor,” Fritts said. “ ‘Viewed zoologically,’ writes Mr. Agassiz, ‘the several races of man are well marked and distinct,’ and he goes on to say that it is wrong to regard Caucasians and negroes as belonging to a single species. He lists more differences between them, psychological as well as physiological, than there can be between members of a single species. He says, for example, that negroes are more submissive, obsequious and imitative by nature, and that it is ‘mock philanthropy’ to assert that they are equal to whites in any regard whatsoever. ‘Imitative by nature,’ mark that, Your Honor, as it is germane to my case. His talk was later reprinted in the Christian Examiner, Your Honor can read it for himself. In other words, the mixing together of the white and the black races is not only offensive unto heaven, not only destructive of the order of things as ordained by God, but also damaging to the divinely created race of human whites. If we allow a black to breed with a white, you might get a slightly more intelligent black, but you’re just as likely to get a defective white.”

  Moody saw Sarah’s hand go involuntarily to her belly.

  “No, Your Honor, the crime that this woman has committed must not be taken lightly. She has sinned against God and Creation, a sin no less severe in its potential consequences than that committed by her oldest ancestor, Eve, when she bit into that forbidden apple and had us all cast from the Garden of Eden. A sin against the laws of Moses as well as against the laws of nature, not to mention the laws of Indiana. Will we allow consorting with brutes, and be cast out of Paradise a second time?

  “We need not go into the question of whether this couple were joined in lawful matrimony by a recognized minister of the cloth, as I have no doubt my esteemed colleague Mr. Parker intends to do. He’ll simply be a-wasting of the court’s time, because by the statutes of the state of Indiana no such marriage can lawfully be contracted, and so it don’t matter if they were married by the pope himself, the state couldn’t recognize it. Shouldn’t recognize it. Must not recognize it.”

  Why wasn’t Parker saying anything? Why was he just sitting in his chair like he’d fallen asleep during a preacher’s sermon? Moody felt like throwing something at him to wake him up.

  “As for the accused man,” Fritts continued, nodding at Leason, “I’m tempted, Your Honor, I’m sorely tempted to incline toward leniency. After all, it’s probably true that when he first took up with Sarah Franklin, I won’t say married her, but when he first took up with her, he believed her to be of the same species as himself. And by the time the truth of the matter became known, there were property issues to consider, and now there is this poor child on the way, and it is entirely understandable that for them the easiest, the least inconvenient, course of action was to take no action at all, as is the usual thing with nigg—that is, with members of the dusky race. So I’m tempted to say, let her feel the full measure of the law for the gravity of the sin she has knowingly committed, but let us show this boy the understanding and forbearance that the apostle Paul showed to the runaway slave Onesimus—you will recall, Your Honor, that after converting Onesimus to Christianity he sent him back to Philemon, his rightful master. We in the state of Indiana are doing the same to thousands of runaway slaves, sending them back to their rightful masters; we have always done our Christian duty toward their kind, and have set an example for others to follow throughout the world. In fact, the very crime for which this boy appears before us today can be seen as the unfortunate consequence of what Mr. Agassiz has identified as the negro’s ‘imitative nature,’ as I mentioned earlier, as well as of our own benevolent attitude toward his species for the past two hundred and some years. For was it not ourselves who taught ’em to form monogamous pair bonds, to cover themselves with decent clothes, to work hard to improve their lot, to want to live in houses and raise children to be better off than themselves?

  “That, Your Honor, is my tendency to view the matter. But I am a sentimental man. I am not a judge but an advocate. I fully appreciate that Your Honor may feel duty bound to take both a shorter and a longer view than mine. As my learned colleague here has rightly said, how can only one of them be guilty of the crime of fornication? Your Honor may feel obliged to consider that this man has, knowingly and willingly, as we shall endeavor to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt, broken the laws of this state, nay, of this nation, flouted them openly and publicly, taken our trust and our tolerance and our encouragement and done what with them? Used them to defile our women! Become the viper in the garden, the very personification of the Devil incarnate. Creep like the foul black worm into the pure white flesh of our apple. Your Honor may feel inclined to punish that, and to make of this case an example to the rest of his species already in this state, and especially to those outside of it who may be contemplating coming into it, and there are many thousands of them camped at thi
s very moment at our gates. The court may wish to make it known that in this state we do not take lightly to such abuses of our kindness. Your Honor may feel it necessary to take an even longer view, and consider what Indiana may be like fifty, a hundred, a hundred and fifty years down the line, if every runaway slave and derelict freebooter from Kentucky to South Carolina knew that they could come into this state and flout our laws, make free with our women, impregnate our daughters, sully the purity of the white race, and receive nothing for their hideous actions but a slap on the wrist and an admonition to go and henceforth be good boys, which is what I, a foolish, sentimental old man, would be inclined to recommend. We have an obligation to our future selves. I have no doubt that Mr. Parker, too, will allow his sentimentality to get the better of his rational thinking, and speak to this court about tempering justice with mercy, and leavening the good, honest bread of common sense with the yeast of compassion. Your Honor may feel, and would be right to feel, and will long be remembered for feeling, that yours is the greater responsibility to the future peace and dignity of this state, to the future peace and dignity of this country, to the future peace and dignity of the human race, to take a sterner view of the matter.”

  Fritts sat down and the room was so silent that Moody thought for a moment the trial was over, that they may as well get up and start putting their lives back together somehow. He heard a few grumbles from the cigar smokers standing behind them, but he didn’t look around. Judge Amery cleared his throat and took his pocket watch out of his waistcoat and looked at it.

  “Thank you, Mr. Fritts. A fine peroration, and one that has taken us perilously close to the lunch hour. Mr. Parker, if you have no objection, I will declare a recess of one hour.”

  “No objection, Your Honor.”

  “Then this court will reconvene at one o’clock.”

  14.

  The last thing they felt like doing was to sit down and eat as if Lawyer Fritts had just told them a story about Brer Rabbit and Tar Baby. Judge Amery hurried out of the courtroom as though he just remembered he’d left his dinner on the stove, but Moody and Tamsey remained in their seats as everyone around them began to talk and file out without looking at them. They sat there alone for a while longer.

  “I guess I always knew what white people thought,” Tamsey said. “I just never knew they worked out a good reason for it. They think we have our babies without pain? Didn’t my babies come out of me with pain like a bullwhip, all of them? Lashes of pain. And not just where the baby come out, but all over my body. My eyeballs hurt. My back ache. I couldn’t use my legs, I near drop Leason when the midwife put him on my chest, I had to hold him with my wrists, couldn’t hardly put my breast to his mouth for the pain in my hands. It was sweet pain, dear pain, but it was pain. ‘In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children’—does that mean only white women? Does Mr. Fritts think we feel no pain when we are hit with bats, or when we whipped, or shot in places that would not kill us? I have sat with men who been flayed so bad they ribs show through they meat, they groan with pain all night and then go back into the field in the morning so they won’t be whipped again.”

  “Not everyone thinks like that,” Moody said.

  “Not everyone has to.”

  “Fritts is a Southerner.”

  She looked at him. “You a Southerner. What do you think?”

  “Not that,” he said. “I think you’re the finest human I ever met.”

  She sagged a little at that, and almost leaned into him. Then she took a breath. “Get us out of here, Muddy. Get us out of Indiana.”

  “I will,” he said. “Just not yet.”

  Granville and Sabetha were waiting at the door. Tamsey stood and Moody rose with her. He picked up the lunch pails and took them outside, where he was surprised that the sun was still shining and a light breeze rattled the yellowing leaves on the oaks around the courthouse. The smell of cold vegetation filled his nostrils, but it was a coldness not of death but of preservation. Stokes came over to them, looking like he wanted to say something. Then Cliff Parker, and Brother Joshua with him. Tamsey put her arms around Brother Joshua and began to weep onto his shoulder. He patted her on the back.

  “Courage, Sister,” he said. “This ain’t over.”

  “Feel like it is,” she said. “How can we answer that?” She pushed him gently away and looked up into his eyes. Moody thought he looked like a preacher. Granville shook his hand and Brother Joshua said to him, “Look at you, all growed up. And Sister Sabetha, you still reading everything you get your hands on?”

  “This here is Virgil Moody,” Tamsey said. “He saved us when we ran from New Harmony. We went back there shortly after the raid, but nobody there. What happen?”

  “All the brothers and sisters who weren’t took left after the raid,” Brother Joshua said. “Twenty-two years, gone like that.” He snapped his fingers. “Some took the government ticket to Liberia, some took the Underground Railroad up to Cass County, Michigan, which should be just about as black as Liberia by now, and some gone all the way up into Canada, where slavery been abolished seventeen years and catchers ain’t allowed to go, although I hear they do. Not like here, though. I went to Cincinnati with some others, started up a church there, helped a few north. I don’t know, time just went by, like it does.”

  “What happen to James?” Tamsey asked.

  “You don’t know?”

  “Not for sure.”

  “He killed, Sister Tamsey,” Brother Joshua said. “I’m sorry to tell you that, I thought you knew. We found him in the cornfield in the morning.”

  Tamsey sagged against Moody’s arm, and he didn’t move. If Brother Joshua saw, he didn’t say anything. “He lay in the cornfield all night?”

  “Most of us hid in the woods until the catchers left. We buried him in the cemetery along with some mighty good people. Catchers only got about fifty of us.”

  “Thank you, Brother Joshua.”

  Moody said, “What about Lucas and Benah? Do you know what happened to them?”

  “Lucas and Benah from the North Star?” Brother Joshua shook his head. “Like I said, everybody went off to different places. My guess is, they got away and went to Canada. The fightin’ at the Morning Star give ’em time to make the woods.”

  “Why Canada?”

  “That where they were headed when they come to New Harmony, so I figure that where they continue to when they left.”

  “You don’t hear from anyone?”

  “I do, from time to time. But I ain’t heard from them.”

  “You have trouble in Cincinnati?” asked Tamsey.

  “Trouble everywhere, Sister,” he said. “Not like here, though. That convention across the street,” he said, looking toward the Masonic Temple, “they makin’ every bad thing legal so they can keep doin’ it. Ain’t that abuse of power?” he asked, looking at Parker.

  “Like you say,” replied the lawyer, “there’s trouble everywhere.”

  Brother Joshua turned back to Tamsey. “You ain’t staying on after this, is you?”

  “No, Muddy here taking us to Canada.” She looked at him and he nodded.

  “Canada the new Promised Land,” Brother Joshua said, “they call it the new Canaan because it the land of milk and honey. They got laws there against slavery, that the milk, and none against mixed marriage, that the honey.” This time he did look at Moody, and smiled. “Whites and blacks consort freely together,” he said, “all according to God’s law.”

  “God’s law?” asked Parker.

  “Moses married a black woman,” Brother Joshua said. “His wife, Zipporah, was Ethiopian, and when Moses’s sister, Miriam, spoke against the marriage, God himself come down from heaven in a pillar of smoke and stood in the tabernacle and told Miriam his servant Moses was faithful in all his house, and he would speak to Moses mouth to mouth, not in dark speeches like that Lawyer Fritts, and he ask Miriam was she not afraid to speak against his servant Moses? And the anger of the Lord was kindled agains
t her, and the smoke depart from the tabernacle, and behold Miriam became leprous, turned white as snow. Served her right, too, no offense.”

  “She turned white?”

  “That the leprosy,” Brother Joshua said. “You maybe heard of Henry Moss, a slave from Virginia? Happen to him, too.”

  “What, he got leprosy?”

  “Well, no. He just turned white, nobody knows why. He still the same afterward as he was before.”

  “I might call you as a witness, Brother Joshua,” Parker said. “But right now I’ve got to go look a few things up. See you back in court.”

  “You do that,” Brother Joshua called after him. “We can make this trial a crusade, sweep away these unholy laws that are anathema unto the Lord.”

  “You’ll stay and eat with us, Brother Joshua?” Moody asked, and they sat beneath the skeleton of a bare tree and pretended they were having a Sunday picnic, Tamsey and Brother Joshua, Sabetha and Granville and Stokes. Except it was a Monday and the chicken tasted like dried pelican in their mouths.

  15.

  When they were back in the courtroom, there was an even greater crush of people than there had been before the break. They saw Solomon Kästchen sitting near the front, beside two women wearing Quaker bonnets. Had he come in case the trial went badly? Ready to send Leason north before the mob got to him? Moody didn’t know whether Kästchen’s presence was a comfort or a worry to Tamsey. She was inclined to worry.

  Parker came in looking like he’d been run over by a post coach. His clothes were rumpled and his hair stuck up at odd angles. Moody watched him take his place at the table between Leason and Sarah just before the bailiff said, “All rise.” He looked like a small-town lawyer who’d found himself caught up in a big-city trial that nothing in his life had prepared him for, and that he could not win. Fritts would bamboozle him. Parker would be a popular man in Indiana if he lost this trial, but he’d be labeled a fool for having taken it on. He’d live out his days in Spencer, probating wills and filing bankruptcies. Moody watched him set a sheaf of papers in front of him that looked as though he’d scribbled them out during the recess. He liked Cliffington Parker, and forgave him already, but he wished he’d stuck it out in law school in New Orleans. He wished he himself could be defending Leason. He corrected himself: Leason and Sarah.

 

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