Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  Miss Ophelia felt rather disposed to cavil at this picture, and was laying down her knitting to begin, but St. Clare stopped her.

  “Now, I know every word you are going to say. I do not say they were alike, in fact. One fell into a condition where everything acted against the natural tendency, and the other where everything acted for it; and so one turned out a pretty wilful, stout, overbearing old democrat, and the other a wilful, stout old despot. If both had owned plantations in Louisiana, they would have been as like as two old bullets cast in the same mould.”

  “What an undutiful boy you are!” said Miss Ophelia.

  “I don’t mean them any disrespect,” said St. Clare. “You know reverence is not my forte. But, to go back to my history:

  “When father died, he left the whole property to us twin boys, to be divided as we should agree. There does not breathe on God’s earth a nobler-souled, more generous fellow, than Alfred, in all that concerns his equals; and we got on admirably with this property question, without a single unbrotherly word or feeling. We undertook to work the plantation together; and Alfred, whose outward life and capabilities had double the strength of mine, became an enthusiastic planter, and a wonderfully successful one.

  “But two years’ trial satisfied me that I could not be a partner in that matter. To have a great gang of seven hundred, whom I could not know personally, or feel any individual interest in, bought and driven, housed, fed, worked like so many horned cattle, strained up to military precision, — the question of how little of life’s commonest enjoyments would keep them in working order being a constantly recurring problem, — the necessity of drivers and overseers, — the ever-necessary whip, first, last, and only argument, — the whole thing was insufferably disgusting and loathsome to me; and when I thought of my mother’s estimate of one poor human soul, it became even frightful!

  “It’s all nonsense to talk to me about slaves enjoying all this! To this day, I have no patience with the unutterable trash that some of your patronizing Northerners have made up, as in their zeal to apologize for our sins. We all know better. Tell me that any man living wants to work all his days, from day-dawn till dark, under the constant eye of a master, without the power of putting forth one irresponsible volition, on the same dreary, monotonous, unchanging toil, and all for two pairs of pantaloons and a pair of shoes a year, with enough food and shelter to keep him in working order! Any man who thinks that human beings can, as a general thing, be made about as comfortable that way as any other, I wish he might try it. I’d buy the dog, and work him, with a clear conscience!”

  “I always have supposed,” said Miss Ophelia, “that you, all of you, approved of these things, and thought them right — according to Scripture.”

  “Humbug! We are not quite reduced to that yet. Alfred who is as determined a despot as ever walked, does not pretend to this kind of defence; — no, he stands, high and haughty, on that good old respectable ground, the right of the strongest; and he says, and I think quite sensibly, that the American planter is ‘only doing, in another form, what the English aristocracy and capitalists are doing by the lower classes;’ that is, I take it, appropriating them, body and bone, soul and spirit, to their use and convenience. He defends both, — and I think, at least, consistently. He says that there can be no high civilization without enslavement of the masses, either nominal or real. There must, he says, be a lower class, given up to physical toil and confined to an animal nature; and a higher one thereby acquires leisure and wealth for a more expanded intelligence and improvement, and becomes the directing soul of the lower. So he reasons, because, as I said, he is born an aristocrat; — so I don’t believe, because I was born a democrat.”

  “How in the world can the two things be compared?” said Miss Ophelia. “The English laborer is not sold, traded, parted from his family, whipped.”

  “He is as much at the will of his employer as if he were sold to him. The slave-owner can whip his refractory slave to death, — the capitalist can starve him to death. As to family security, it is hard to say which is the worst, — to have one’s children sold, or see them starve to death at home.”

  “But it’s no kind of apology for slavery, to prove that it isn’t worse than some other bad thing.”

  “I didn’t give it for one, — nay, I’ll say, besides, that ours is the more bold and palpable infringement of human rights; actually buying a man up, like a horse, — looking at his teeth, cracking his joints, and trying his paces and then paying down for him, — having speculators, breeders, traders, and brokers in human bodies and souls, — sets the thing before the eyes of the civilized world in a more tangible form, though the thing done be, after all, in its nature, the same; that is, appropriating one set of human beings to the use and improvement of another without any regard to their own.”

  “I never thought of the matter in this light,” said Miss Ophelia.

  “Well, I’ve travelled in England some, and I’ve looked over a good many documents as to the state of their lower classes; and I really think there is no denying Alfred, when he says that his slaves are better off than a large class of the population of England. You see, you must not infer, from what I have told you, that Alfred is what is called a hard master; for he isn’t. He is despotic, and unmerciful to insubordination; he would shoot a fellow down with as little remorse as he would shoot a buck, if he opposed him. But, in general, he takes a sort of pride in having his slaves comfortably fed and accommodated.

  “When I was with him, I insisted that he should do something for their instruction; and, to please me, he did get a chaplain, and used to have them catechized Sunday, though, I believe, in his heart, that he thought it would do about as much good to set a chaplain over his dogs and horses. And the fact is, that a mind stupefied and animalized by every bad influence from the hour of birth, spending the whole of every week-day in unreflecting toil, cannot be done much with by a few hours on Sunday. The teachers of Sunday-schools among the manufacturing population of England, and among plantation-hands in our country, could perhaps testify to the same result, there and here. Yet some striking exceptions there are among us, from the fact that the negro is naturally more impressible to religious sentiment than the white.”

  “Well,” said Miss Ophelia, “how came you to give up your plantation life?”

  “Well, we jogged on together some time, till Alfred saw plainly that I was no planter. He thought it absurd, after he had reformed, and altered, and improved everywhere, to suit my notions, that I still remained unsatisfied. The fact was, it was, after all, the THING that I hated — the using these men and women, the perpetuation of all this ignorance, brutality and vice, — just to make money for me!

  “Besides, I was always interfering in the details. Being myself one of the laziest of mortals, I had altogether too much fellow-feeling for the lazy; and when poor, shiftless dogs put stones at the bottom of their cotton-baskets to make them weigh heavier, or filled their sacks with dirt, with cotton at the top, it seemed so exactly like what I should do if I were they, I couldn’t and wouldn’t have them flogged for it. Well, of course, there was an end of plantation discipline; and Alf and I came to about the same point that I and my respected father did, years before. So he told me that I was a womanish sentimentalist, and would never do for business life; and advised me to take the bank-stock and the New Orleans family mansion, and go to writing poetry, and let him manage the plantation. So we parted, and I came here.”

  “But why didn’t you free your slaves?”

  “Well, I wasn’t up to that. To hold them as tools for money-making, I could not; — have them to help spend money, you know, didn’t look quite so ugly to me. Some of them were old house-servants, to whom I was much attached; and the younger ones were children to the old. All were well satisfied to be as they were.” He paused, and walked reflectively up and down the room.

  “There was,” said St. Clare, “a time in my life when I had plans and hopes of doing something in this worl
d, more than to float and drift. I had vague, indistinct yearnings to be a sort of emancipator, — to free my native land from this spot and stain. All young men have had such fever-fits, I suppose, some time, — but then—”

  “Why didn’t you?” said Miss Ophelia;—”you ought not to put your hand to the plough, and look back.”

  “O, well, things didn’t go with me as I expected, and I got the despair of living that Solomon did. I suppose it was a necessary incident to wisdom in us both; but, some how or other, instead of being actor and regenerator in society, I became a piece of driftwood, and have been floating and eddying about, ever since. Alfred scolds me, every time we meet; and he has the better of me, I grant, — for he really does something; his life is a logical result of his opinions and mine is a contemptible non sequitur.”

  “My dear cousin, can you be satisfied with such a way of spending your probation?”

  “Satisfied! Was I not just telling you I despised it? But, then, to come back to this point, — we were on this liberation business. I don’t think my feelings about slavery are peculiar. I find many men who, in their hearts, think of it just as I do. The land groans under it; and, bad as it is for the slave, it is worse, if anything, for the master. It takes no spectacles to see that a great class of vicious, improvident, degraded people, among us, are an evil to us, as well as to themselves. The capitalist and aristocrat of England cannot feel that as we do, because they do not mingle with the class they degrade as we do. They are in our homes; they are the associates of our children, and they form their minds faster than we can; for they are a race that children always will cling to and assimilate with. If Eva, now, was not more angel than ordinary, she would be ruined. We might as well allow the small-pox to run among them, and think our children would not take it, as to let them be uninstructed and vicious, and think our children will not be affected by that. Yet our laws positively and utterly forbid any efficient general educational system, and they do it wisely, too; for, just begin and thoroughly educate one generation, and the whole thing would be blown sky high. If we did not give them liberty, they would take it.”

  “And what do you think will be the end of this?” said Miss Ophelia.

  “I don’t know. One thing is certain, — that there is a mustering among the masses, the world over; and there is a dies iræ coming on, sooner or later. The same thing is working in Europe, in England, and in this country. My mother used to tell me of a millennium that was coming, when Christ should reign, and all men should be free and happy. And she taught me, when I was a boy, to pray, ‘thy kingdom come.’ Sometimes I think all this sighing, and groaning, and stirring among the dry bones foretells what she used to tell me was coming. But who may abide the day of His appearing?”

  “Augustine, sometimes I think you are not far from the kingdom,” said Miss Ophelia, laying down her knitting, and looking anxiously at her cousin.

  “Thank you for your good opinion, but it’s up and down with me, — up to heaven’s gate in theory, down in earth’s dust in practice. But there’s the teabell, — do let’s go, — and don’t say, now, I haven’t had one downright serious talk, for once in my life.”

  At table, Marie alluded to the incident of Prue. “I suppose you’ll think, cousin,” she said, “that we are all barbarians.”

  “I think that’s a barbarous thing,” said Miss Ophelia, “but I don’t think you are all barbarians.”

  “Well, now,” said Marie, “I know it’s impossible to get along with some of these creatures. They are so bad they ought not to live. I don’t feel a particle of sympathy for such cases. If they’d only behave themselves, it would not happen.”

  “But, mamma,” said Eva, “the poor creature was unhappy; that’s what made her drink.”

  “O, fiddlestick! as if that were any excuse! I’m unhappy, very often. I presume,” she said, pensively, “that I’ve had greater trials than ever she had. It’s just because they are so bad. There’s some of them that you cannot break in by any kind of severity. I remember father had a man that was so lazy he would run away just to get rid of work, and lie round in the swamps, stealing and doing all sorts of horrid things. That man was caught and whipped, time and again, and it never did him any good; and the last time he crawled off, though he couldn’t but just go, and died in the swamp. There was no sort of reason for it, for father’s hands were always treated kindly.”

  “I broke a fellow in, once,” said St. Clare, “that all the overseers and masters had tried their hands on in vain.”

  “You!” said Marie; “well, I’d be glad to know when you ever did anything of the sort.”

  “Well, he was a powerful, gigantic fellow, — a native-born African; and he appeared to have the rude instinct of freedom in him to an uncommon degree. He was a regular African lion. They called him Scipio. Nobody could do anything with him; and he was sold round from overseer to overseer, till at last Alfred bought him, because he thought he could manage him. Well, one day he knocked down the overseer, and was fairly off into the swamps. I was on a visit to Alf’s plantation, for it was after we had dissolved partnership. Alfred was greatly exasperated; but I told him that it was his own fault, and laid him any wager that I could break the man; and finally it was agreed that, if I caught him, I should have him to experiment on. So they mustered out a party of some six or seven, with guns and dogs, for the hunt. People, you know, can get up as much enthusiasm in hunting a man as a deer, if it is only customary; in fact, I got a little excited myself, though I had only put in as a sort of mediator, in case he was caught.

  “Well, the dogs bayed and howled, and we rode and scampered, and finally we started him. He ran and bounded like a buck, and kept us well in the rear for some time; but at last he got caught in an impenetrable thicket of cane; then he turned to bay, and I tell you he fought the dogs right gallantly. He dashed them to right and left, and actually killed three of them with only his naked fists, when a shot from a gun brought him down, and he fell, wounded and bleeding, almost at my feet. The poor fellow looked up at me with manhood and despair both in his eye. I kept back the dogs and the party, as they came pressing up, and claimed him as my prisoner. It was all I could do to keep them from shooting him, in the flush of success; but I persisted in my bargain, and Alfred sold him to me. Well, I took him in hand, and in one fortnight I had him tamed down as submissive and tractable as heart could desire.”

  “What in the world did you do to him?” said Marie.

  “Well, it was quite a simple process. I took him to my own room, had a good bed made for him, dressed his wounds, and tended him myself, until he got fairly on his feet again. And, in process of time, I had free papers made out for him, and told him he might go where he liked.”

  “And did he go?” said Miss Ophelia.

  “No. The foolish fellow tore the paper in two, and absolutely refused to leave me. I never had a braver, better fellow, — trusty and true as steel. He embraced Christianity afterwards, and became as gentle as a child. He used to oversee my place on the lake, and did it capitally, too. I lost him the first cholera season. In fact, he laid down his life for me. For I was sick, almost to death; and when, through the panic, everybody else fled, Scipio worked for me like a giant, and actually brought me back into life again. But, poor fellow! he was taken, right after, and there was no saving him. I never felt anybody’s loss more.”

  Eva had come gradually nearer and nearer to her father, as he told the story, — her small lips apart, her eyes wide and earnest with absorbing interest.

  As he finished, she suddenly threw her arms around his neck, burst into tears, and sobbed convulsively.

  “Eva, dear child! what is the matter?” said St. Clare, as the child’s small frame trembled and shook with the violence of her feelings. “This child,” he added, “ought not to hear any of this kind of thing, — she’s nervous.”

  “No, papa, I’m not nervous,” said Eva, controlling herself, suddenly, with a strength of resolution singular in such a c
hild. “I’m not nervous, but these things sink into my heart.”

  “What do you mean, Eva?”

  “I can’t tell you, papa, I think a great many thoughts. Perhaps some day I shall tell you.”

  “Well, think away, dear, — only don’t cry and worry your papa,” said St. Clare, “Look here, — see what a beautiful peach I have got for you.”

  Eva took it and smiled, though there was still a nervous twiching about the corners of her mouth.

  “Come, look at the gold-fish,” said St. Clare, taking her hand and stepping on to the verandah. A few moments, and merry laughs were heard through the silken curtains, as Eva and St. Clare were pelting each other with roses, and chasing each other among the alleys of the court.

  There is danger that our humble friend Tom be neglected amid the adventures of the higher born; but, if our readers will accompany us up to a little loft over the stable, they may, perhaps, learn a little of his affairs. It was a decent room, containing a bed, a chair, and a small, rough stand, where lay Tom’s Bible and hymn-book; and where he sits, at present, with his slate before him, intent on something that seems to cost him a great deal of anxious thought.

  The fact was, that Tom’s home-yearnings had become so strong that he had begged a sheet of writing-paper of Eva, and, mustering up all his small stock of literary attainment acquired by Mas’r George’s instructions, he conceived the bold idea of writing a letter; and he was busy now, on his slate, getting out his first draft. Tom was in a good deal of trouble, for the forms of some of the letters he had forgotten entirely; and of what he did remember, he did not know exactly which to use. And while he was working, and breathing very hard, in his earnestness, Eva alighted, like a bird, on the round of his chair behind him, and peeped over his shoulder.