“I believe in you, my dear. I think God is in this.”
“I will need to pray about it,” said Carolyn. “We need to pray about it. In one way it goes against what I’ve always thought. Seeing women temperance leaders has always made me uncomfortable.”
Richmond took her hand. “It is you they have asked for, Carolyn, not a fiery woman out championing some cause. I honestly do think you should seriously consider it.”
The second Democratic convention convened in Baltimore a month after Lincoln’s nomination, hoping to break their deadlock. But the fight between Northern and Southern interests continued, neither side willing to budge. More ballots were taken. As he had been in April, Douglas was again the clear winner, but without receiving the two-thirds majority required. Again the Buchanan Democrats representing the Southern states walked out.
In their absence, eventually the convention voted to make Stephen A. Douglas the Democratic nominee for president in that he had now received more than two-thirds of the votes of the remaining delegates who were present.
Outraged at having their votes ignored, Southern Democrats met a week later in Richmond, Virginia, and convened a Democratic convention of their own.
President Buchanan’s attempted policy of compromise had not proved effective. The Southern delegation put forward in his place Buchanan’s vice president John Breckinridge. With two antislavery candidates from Illinois on the ballot, they hoped a split in the Northern vote would propel pro-South Breckinridge into the White House, But their strategy obviously involved risk, for in putting forward two Democratic candidates, the vote of the Democratic party would likewise be split.
A month later, complicating the upcoming election all the more, the old Whig Party nominated John Bell as yet a fourth national candidate.
Only time would tell whether Breckinridge would defeat the split vote of two Northerners, or whether Lincoln, the Republican, would defeat the split vote of two Democrats.
Forty
Seth left the house in a thoughtful mood and walked slowly toward the arbor. It was a quiet Virginia evening in early September… warm, peaceful, humid, with whispers and fragrances in the air of the coming night.
He had been deeply shaken by the attack by Scully Riggs and his cohorts, by the cold-blooded hanging of the black man he had been forced to witness, and by the tense visit to Greenwood by Wyatt and the small posse of bounty hunters led by Malone Murdoch.
In his more rational moments when reason ruled his thoughts, he could intellectually convince himself that the heightened atmosphere of danger was not actually his fault, but simply evidenced the growing danger of the times. In his more morose moments, however, he could not but feel a heavy weight of personal responsibility for the sudden increase in violence that seemed to be taking place with Greenwood at its center and focus.
He had been thinking about the things his father had shared with him before Murdoch and his men had ridden into Greenwood. The incident confirmed all the more the danger they were in. One more attack like Scully’s, or close call with a man like Murdoch, and he or his father could wind up dead! Or one more midnight hanging by Wyatt’s vigilante mob and one of their own blacks might be the victim. What if Wyatt captured Malachi cutting across some distant corner of the Oakbriar property on his way back from a railroad rendezvous? Then it would be Malachi at the end of Wyatt’s rope!
Even though his father’s situation as a young man had been so different, thought Seth, he too had been faced with a crisis. Yet rather than meet it head-on and contest the charges against him, he left England and returned to Virginia. His father had met his crisis by avoiding a confrontation. He had not done so to run away, but because it was the most prudent course of action.
How might he learn from his father’s example? Seth wondered. Maybe this was no time to hang around and endanger himself and his family further. Perhaps the time had come when it would be wisest to diffuse his own personal crisis—and lessen the danger to everyone else at the same time—by leaving the area so that the flames of anger against him could simply burn themselves out.
Was he facing a time to meet conflict head-on and fight it… or to avoid a confrontation altogether?
How many times through the years had Seth seen his parents disappear into the arbor together. It was only recently as he began exercising a faith of his own that he realized that they went there to pray, to seek God’s guidance. He knew the decision to free Greenwood’s slaves had originated there. He suspected they had prayed for him and Cynthia and Thomas many times in the depths of their garden sanctuary. And how many other decisions and quandaries had been resolved within its sheltered paths and hidden places of personal retreat?
Now he was facing a critical decision that would represent a major turning point in his life. He had watched his mother and father live out the practicality of their beliefs. As his teen years had advanced, he had grown more and more capable of seeing how deep those wellsprings of faith went within them. Through the years he had gradually made their faith his own. There had been no single moment of conversionary fire, no event to which he could point like the evening his father had walked through the open door of that church.
For Seth Davidson, the realization that he wanted to live as God’s man had been a slow-growing one—a commitment and dedication that had deepened steadily within his heart as he had matured from fifteen to eighteen and now as he approached twenty-one.
And now a moment had come to put that commitment to the test more than he had ever had to before.
It was different than his entanglement with Veronica. Once his way had been made clear in that situation, he had known what to do. All it had taken to navigate that dilemma had been common sense. True, it had taken him some time to see it. But the decision itself to end the engagement was not in itself a difficult one. It had been hard to carry out. But once he came to his senses and knew what he needed to do, his course was obvious and he had done it.
But he was now facing something entirely different. He didn’t know what to do. His parents couldn’t tell him. There was no commonsense decision to make. He honestly didn’t know what was best.
Only God could tell him what to do. He needed help. He needed guidance to make the right decision. For one of the few times in his life, Seth Davidson knew that he needed to hear from God.
As the trees and shrubbery of the arbor closed around him, a sense of calm and quietness of spirit descended upon him. He had been here dozens of times, probably hundreds. But for the first time a sense of what this place meant stole over him. This was his parents’ closet of prayer. What a wonderful thing, what a precious opportunity, to be able to touch the generational flow of prayer like this. It was the generational flow out of which he had been born—both physically and spiritually! Out of his parents’ prayers had their love for one another emerged. And out of their prayers his own faith in God emerged.
They had prayed for him!
The simplicity yet magnitude of that simple fact suddenly overwhelmed him in gratitude. In a sense, this place represented his own spiritual birthplace, the spiritual soil in which his roots of personhood had been nourished, and given the strength for potential growth when the time came for him to make those roots his own.
As he walked, Seth’s gratefulness deepened to have been given Carolyn Davidson as a mother and Richmond Davidson as a father. What son could be more blessed!
Thank you, God and Father, as my own mother and father have taught me to call you, prayed Seth silently in his heart. I thank you, as I grew to become the person I am, that you drew me to seek you, that you placed within me the desire to know you and serve you and obey you. Thank you for my dear mother and father whom I love, and for their devotion to you, and their courage to obey you, which has been such an example to me. Help me to follow their example, and to continue to be a faithful son. Let me never think I have outgrown my need for their wisdom.
Prayer for his parents reminded him of the very practical per
plexity of his current dilemma.
Lord, he began to pray in a more serious vein, I pray for the safety of my family and Greenwood and all the people who call this place home. Let no danger or harm come to them. Protect them like the caring Father you are.
As for me, Lord, you know my perplexity well enough. I hardly need recite it to you. You know my heart, you know my thoughts, you know my fears. And you know that I don’t know what is best to do. I ask you to show me, Lord. Guide me into your perfect will. Please, God, show me what you want me to do. And give me the fortitude, courage, faith, patience, and hope to obey you when you make your will clear.
Seth prayed for another ten or fifteen minutes, sometimes in words, occasionally in silences, then rose and continued to walk about the garden until dusk gradually settled over Greenwood. Even before he began making his way back toward the house, he sensed that God may have begun to provide fragmentary answers to the questions plaguing him about his future.
A sense had been growing upon him for several weeks that a change was coming. Almost the moment he said the words an hour earlier, Please, God, show me what you want me to do, that sense grew strong. Almost the same moment he had been reminded of his older sister.
The idea of actually leaving Greenwood, perhaps even leaving Virginia, was one he had never before considered. This was his home. It had always been his home. He had assumed it would remain his home indefinitely. The idea of leaving did not fill him with a sense of adventure but of sadness. He had no desire to leave. He loved Greenwood. He could never feel at home anywhere else.
And yet… what if the threats and the danger might be lessened by his absence? Might his not being here lessen the animosity of his one-time friends like Wyatt and Scully and cause them to lose interest in Greenwood as their perceived enemy?
Denton Beaumont was gone. The local people of Dove’s Landing had grown accustomed to the freedom of Greenwood’s slaves. Wyatt’s resentment wasn’t really with the senior Davidson, Seth realized. The competitive animosity of youth was between the oldest sons of the two families—him and Wyatt. If he was gone, Wyatt might lose interest in Greenwood as an object of his hatred. Maybe the broken engagement with Veronica was part of it, maybe it wasn’t. He really had no way to know. But the fact was—he was at the center of the resentment, whatever its cause.
He was himself the lightning rod for their anger. Not only was he himself in danger, he increased the danger to everyone around him. If he were gone, Wyatt’s and Brad’s and Scully’s eyes would turn elsewhere. Perhaps, thought Seth, if he were gone, Thomas might even grow closer to their parents. Who could tell but what some of Thomas’ animosity stemmed from living all his life in the shadow of an older brother.
Again his thoughts returned to Cynthia. Perhaps she was the answer to the dilemma of where he ought to go for a while.
Forty-One
A tall wagon rumbled into Dove’s Landing, clattering and banging with pans and pots and brooms and mops and paraphernalia of every diverse kind, its side panels painted in bold letters and announcing to curious passersby: Professor Weldon Southcote, A Woman’s Best Friend: Housewares, Utensils, Tools, and Supplies. The man seated gaily atop the bench seat guiding his two sturdy draught horses through the town’s main street was himself as colorful as the lettering on the sides of his traveling emporium.
The women who happened to be out glanced curiously at the wagon and the assortment of goods hanging and dangling from hooks and pegs. The good professor’s Ho of welcome was slower today than usual as he looked about. Eventually he took note of his potential customers, tipped his hat and greeted them warmly, pulled his emporium beside the boardwalk of what appeared the main street, and thence proceeded to do a brisk business for the rest of the afternoon. Mrs. Baker in her store two doors away was anything but pleased as she stared out her window, for every dollar spent with Professor Southcote was a dollar not spent with her. But there was little she could do about it but fuss under her breath.
Professor Southcote was full of more questions for his local clientele than usual. His queries in particular concerned nearby plantations whose good women he might visit with his merchandise. Thus it was that, as the day advanced toward evening, the wagon of Professor Southcote, A Woman’s Best Friend, was heard slowly clattering and jingling up the winding incline over the gravel drive toward the large redbrick plantation house of Greenwood.
Upon his arrival, Maribel did her best for five minutes to send him away on behalf of her mistress, over the man’s most energetic requests to speak with the woman of the house. At length Carolyn herself approached, on her way back from the worker village.
“Would this be Mistress Davidson now?” said Professor Southcote, his face brightening as he stood beside his wagon.
“Dat’s da mistress all right,” said Maribel, ‘but she ain’t gwine want none er yo’ junk no how. I tol’ him, Miz Dab’son,” she said, as Carolyn came closer, “but dis be one stubborn an ornery man what won’ take no—”
“Hello, good lady,” said Southcote, smiling and tipping his hat. “If I might just have a minute of your time?”
“It will be all right, Maribel, thank you,” said Carolyn with a smile. “Who knows but what this gentleman might have something we could use.”
Mumbling to herself, Maribel shuffled her way back into the house.
The moment they were alone, the demeanor of Southcote’s salesman’s persona vanished. His expression immediately grew serious. “Is your husband at home, Mrs. Davidson?” he asked.
“Yes… yes he is,” she answered, puzzled by the sudden shift in tone.
“I need to speak with him.”
“I doubt if he will be as interested in your wares as I am?” laughed Carolyn.
“No doubt. But I seriously need to speak with him, ma’am. While I am doing so, I will be happy for you to look over my goods… happier still if you should find something which might be useful to you. But that is not primarily why I have come.”
Carolyn eyed the man. He was obviously in earnest. She nodded slowly, then turned and left him where he stood. She returned from the direction of the stables a few minutes later with her husband at her side.
“I am Richmond Davidson,” he said, extending his hand. “My wife tells me you want to see me.”
“Yes, sir,” said their strange visitor. “I am Weldon Southcote. If you don’t mind, Mrs. Davidson, if you could look at my merchandise as we speak… if might keep us from being noticed should anyone be watching.”
“What is this all about, Mr. Southcote?” asked Richmond.
Southcote slowly led Richmond around the wagon, pretending to show him one tool or another as he lowered his voice.
“It is about slaves, Mr. Davidson,” he said in confidential tones scarcely above a whisper, “runaway slaves.”
Richmond’s eyes flinched imperceptibly, but he held the man’s gaze.
“What about them?” he said.
“Where they come from… where they go… where they hide.”
“What does this have to do with me, Mr. Southcote? Why do you want to talk to me about runaway slaves? Perhaps you heard that we freed our own slaves a few years ago. While it is true that some of them left and went North, they all had papers and I assure you, none of them—”
“Mr. Davidson,” Southcote interrupted, his voice still soft, but urgent, “I know.”
A pregnant silence followed.
“Know what?” said Richmond after two or three seconds.
“I know about the wind in the horse’s head. I know everything—what is going on here, what you have been doing, and about your safe house for runaway slaves.”
The words stunned Richmond into another brief silence.
“I see,” he nodded, visibly shaken.
“But I am not here to expose you, Mr. Davidson, or put you in more danger than you are in. I am here to warn you… and help you.”
“All right, you have succeeded in getting my attention,” sigh
ed Richmond.
“You are not alone, Mr. Davidson,” Southcote went on. “There are others who can help. But the dangers are increasing on every front. Search parties are on the increase, especially here in northern Virginia. The times are as perilous for those who help as for the runaways themselves. You must watch your every move. You have been seen.”
“What do you mean?”
“Your occasional midnight flights to the border, one of your black men’s regular overland sojourns to Orange County… they are on the lookout for you, though they do not know who you are yet. That is why I am here, to caution you to lay low. Take no more trips to the border yourself. It is too far from here. You will be discovered eventually.”
“My wife and son have only been once, and myself—let me see, three times. Mostly we move people by other means.”
“I understand, but you are too important a link to be jeopardized. The Quaker network is being closely watched, and all who are connected with it. You can be a great asset in our cause. You can save many lives. But you must be more cautious. More eyes are upon you than you know.”
Richmond took in his words soberly. He could hardly believe what he was hearing. “How do we know we can trust you?” he asked.
“You have no choice, Mr. Davidson. I know about the secret cellar under the new house in your slave village. I know of the hidden staircase at the back of your house. I know of the tunnel connecting your cellar with the oak wood. I know that there are caves and tunnels to some house in the hills that you occasionally use. I know too much for you not to trust me. You simply must trust me. I don’t know how to put it more simply than that.”
Richmond’s eyes widened in dismayed amazement. How could the man possibly know so much!
“What is your role in all this?” he asked slowly, visibly shaken by the strange man’s revelation. “Why are you telling me? How can you help?”
“I am an eccentric who knows every main road and back road between Pennsylvania and Georgia,” replied the strange salesman. “I have been traveling these roads for thirty years. No one suspects me because my wagon is a familiar sight and I make no attempt to hide. Neither do they suspect my loyalties. I come and go as I please. I have become a traveling conduit of information. I know who is friend and who is foe. I am often able to put people in touch with others, that they might help one another.”
American Dreams Trilogy Page 83