by John Fox
CHAPTER 19.
THE BLUE OR THE GRAY
In the far North, as in the far South, men had but to drift with thetide. Among the Kentuckians, the forces that moulded her sons--Davisand Lincoln--were at war in the State, as they were at war in thenation. By ties of blood, sympathies, institutions, Kentucky was boundfast to the South. Yet, ten years before, Kentuckians had demanded thegradual emancipation of the slave. That far back, they had carved apledge on a block of Kentucky marble, which should be placed in theWashington monument, that Kentucky would be the last to give up theUnion. For ten years, they had felt the shadow of the war creepingtoward them. In the dark hours of that dismal year, before the dawn offinal decision, the men, women, and children of Kentucky talked oflittle else save war, and the skeleton of war took its place in thecloset of every home from the Ohio to the crest of the Cumberland. Whenthe dawn of that decision came, Kentucky spread before the world arecord of independent-mindedness, patriotism, as each side gave theword, and sacrifice that has no parallel in history. She sent theflower of her youth--forty thousand strong--into the Confederacy; shelifted the lid of her treasury to Lincoln, and in answer to his everycall, sent him a soldier, practically without a bounty and without adraft. And when the curtain fell on the last act of the great tragedy,half of her manhood was behind it--helpless from disease, wounded, ordead on the battle-field.
So, on a gentle April day, when the great news came, it came like asword that, with one stroke, slashed the State in twain, shearingthrough the strongest bonds that link one man to another, whether ofblood, business, politics or religion, as though they were no more thanthreads of wool. Nowhere in the Union was the National drama so playedto the bitter end in the confines of a single State. As the nation wasrent apart, so was the commonwealth; as the State, so was the county;as the county, the neighborhood; as the neighborhood, the family; andas the family, so brother and brother, father and son. In the nationthe kinship was racial only. Brother knew not the face of brother.There was distance between them, antagonism, prejudice, a smoulderingdislike easily fanned to flaming hatred. In Kentucky the brothers hadbeen born in the same bed, slept in the same cradle, played under thesame roof, sat side by side in the same schoolroom, and stood now onthe threshold of manhood arm in arm, with mutual interests, mutuallove, mutual pride in family that made clan feeling peculiarly intense.For antislavery fanaticism, or honest unionism, one needed not to go tothe far North; as, for imperious, hotheaded, non-interference or pureState sovereignty, one needed not to go to the far South. They were allthere in the State, the county, the family--under the same roof. Alongthe border alone did feeling approach uniformity--the border ofKentucky hills. There unionism was free from prejudice as nowhere elseon the continent save elsewhere throughout the Southern mountains.Those Southern Yankees knew nothing about the valley aristocrat,nothing about his slaves, and cared as little for one as for the other.Since '76 they had known but one flag, and one flag only, and to thatflag instinctively they rallied. But that the State should be sweptfrom border to border with horror, there was division even here: for,in the Kentucky mountains, there was, here and there, a patriarch likeJoel Turner who owned slaves, and he and his sons fought for them as heand his sons would have fought for their horses, or their cattle, ortheir sheep.
It was the prescient horror of such a condition that had no little partin the neutral stand that Kentucky strove to maintain. She knew whatwar was--for every fireside was rich in memories that men and women hadof kindred who had fallen on numberless battle-fields--back even to St.Clair's defeat and the Raisin massacre; and though she did not fear warfor its harvest of dangers and death, she did look with terror on aconflict between neighbors, friends, and brothers. So she refusedtroops to Lincoln; she refused them to Davis. Both pledged her immunityfrom invasion, and, to enforce that pledge, she raised Home Guards asshe had already raised State Guards for internal protection and peace.And there--as a State--she stood: but the tragedy went on in theKentucky home--a tragedy of peculiar intensity and pathos in oneKentucky home--the Deans'.
Harry had grown up tall, pale, studious, brooding. He had always beenthe pet of his Uncle Brutus--the old Lion of White Hall. Visiting theHall, he had drunk in the poison, or consecration, as was the point ofview, of abolitionism. At the first sign he was never allowed to goagain. But the poison had gone deep. Whenever he could he went to hearold Brutus speak. Eagerly he heard stories of the fearlessabolitionist's hand-to-hand fights with men who sought to skewer hisfiery tongue. Deeply he brooded on every word that his retentive earhad caught from the old man's lips, and on the wrongs he endured inbehalf of his cause and for freedom of speech.
One other hero did he place above him--the great commoner after whom hehad been christened, Henry Clay Dean. He knew how Clay's life had beendevoted to averting the coming war, and how his last days had beendarkly shadowed by the belief that, when he was gone, the war mustcome. At times he could hear that clarion voice as it rang through theSenate with the bold challenge to his own people that paramount was hisduty to the nation--subordinate his duty to his State. Who can tellwhat the nation owed, in Kentucky, at least, to the passionateallegiance that was broadcast through the State to Henry Clay? It wasnot in the boy's blood to be driven an inch, and no one tried to drivehim. In his own home he was a spectre of gnawing anguish to his motherand Margaret, of unspeakable bitterness and disappointment to hisfather, and an impenetrable sphinx to Dan. For in Dan there was noshaking doubt. He was the spirit, incarnate, of the young,unquestioning, unthinking, generous, reckless, hotheaded, passionateSouth.
And Chad? The news reached Major Buford's farm at noon, and Chad wentto the woods and came in at dusk, haggard and spent. Miserably now heheld his tongue and tortured his brain. Purposely, he never opened hislips to Harry Dean. He tried to make known to the Major the strugglegoing on within him, but the iron-willed old man brushed away allargument with an impatient wave of his hand. With Margaret he talkedonce, and straightway the question was dropped like a living coal. So,Chad withdrew from his fellows. The social life of the town, gayer thanever now, knew him no more. He kept up his college work, but when hewas not at his books, he walked the fields, and many a moonlit midnightfound him striding along a white turnpike, or sitting motionless on topof a fence along the border of some woodland, his chin in both hands,fighting his fight out in the cool stillness alone. He himself littleknew the unmeant significance there was in the old Continental uniformhe had worn to the dance. Even his old rifle, had he but known it, hadbeen carried with Daniel Morgan from Virginia to Washington's aid inCambridge. His earliest memories of war were rooted in thrillingstories of King's Mountain. He had heard old men tell of pointingdeadly rifles at red-coats at New Orleans, and had absorbed their ownlove of Old Hickory. The school-master himself, when a mere lad, hadbeen with Scott in Mexico. The spirit of the back-woodsman had beencaught in the hills, and was alive and unchanged at that very hour. Theboy was practically born in Revolutionary days, and that was why, likeall mountaineers, Chad had little love of State and only love ofcountry--was first, last and all the time, simply American. It was notreason--it was instinct. The heroes the school-master had taught him tolove and some day to emulate, had fought under one flag, and, likethem, the mountaineers never dreamed there could be another. And so theboy was an unconscious reincarnation of that old spirit, uninfluencedby temporary apostasies in the outside world, untouched absolutely bysectional prejudice or the appeal of the slave. The mountaineer had nohatred of the valley aristocrat, because he knew nothing of him, andenvied no man what he was, what he had, or the life he led. So, as forslavery, that question, singularly enough, never troubled his soul. Tohim slaves were hewers of wood and drawers of water. The Lord had madethem so and the Bible said that it was right. That the school-masterhad taught Chad. He had read "Uncle Tom's Cabin," and the story madehim smile. The tragedies of it he had never known and he did notbelieve. Slaves were sleek, well-fed, well-housed, loved and trusted,rightly inferior and happy; and
no aristocrat ever moved among themwith a more lordly, righteous air of authority than did this mountainlad who had known them little more than half a dozen years. Unlike theNorth, the boy had no prejudice, no antagonism, no jealousy, nogrievance to help him in his struggle. Unlike Harry, he had no slavesympathy to stir him to the depths, no stubborn, rebellious pride toprod him on. In the days when the school-master thundered at him somespeech of the Prince of Kentuckians, it was always the national thrillin the fiery utterance that had shaken him even then. So thatunconsciously the boy was the embodiment of pure Americanism, and forthat reason he and the people among whom he was born stood among themillions on either side, quite alone.
What was he fighting then--ah, what? If the bed-rock of his characterwas not loyalty, it was nothing. In the mountains the Turners had takenhim from the Wilderness. In the Bluegrass the old Major had taken himfrom the hills. His very life he owed to the simple, kindlymountaineers, and what he valued more than his life he owed to thesimple gentleman who had picked him up from the roadside and, almostwithout question, had taken him to his heart and to his home. TheTurners, he knew, would fight for their slaves as they would havefought Dillon or Devil had either proposed to take from them a cow, ahog, or a sheep. For that Chad could not blame them. And the Major wasgoing to fight, as he believed, for his liberty, his State, hiscountry, his property, his fireside. So in the eyes of both, Chad mustbe the snake who had warmed his frozen body on their hearthstones andbitten the kindly hands that had warmed him back to life. What wouldMelissa say? Mentally he shrank from the fire of her eyes and the scornof her tongue when she should know. And Margaret--the thought of herbrought always a voiceless groan. To her, he had let his doubts beknown, and her white silence closed his own lips then and there. Thesimple fact that he had doubts was an entering wedge of coldnessbetween them that Chad saw must force them apart for he knew that thetruth must come soon, and what would be the bitter cost of that truth.She could never see him as she saw Harry. Harry was a beloved anderring brother. Hatred of slavery had been cunningly planted in hisheart by her father's own brother, upon whose head the blame forHarry's sin was set. The boy had been taunted until his own father'sscorn had stirred his proud independence into stubborn resistance andintensified his resolution to do what he pleased and what he thoughtwas right. But Chad--she would never understand him. She would neverunderstand his love for the Government that had once abandoned herpeople to savages and forced her State and his to seek aid from aforeign land. In her eyes, too, he would be rending the hearts that hadbeen tenderest to him in all the world: and that was all. Of what fateshe would deal out to him he dared not think. If he lifted his handagainst the South, he must strike at the heart of all he loved best, towhich he owed most. If against the Union, at the heart of all that wasbest in himself. In him the pure spirit that gave birth to the nationwas fighting for life. Ah, God! what should he do--what should he do?